Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

Vale

I was used to the Fates floating through my mind. Their voices usually mingled like drops of mist, yet were decipherable. A lighter tone where every word sounded like a laugh for one, a deep and animalistic rumble for another.

Now, though, as I fell into the chasm of magic within me, they shouted. Louder than the sound of the blade Cypherion had thrown, ripping me from that world and back into this one. Louder than Harlen's voice shredding through my sanity and Cypherion's defensive retorts.

The Fates were all I knew.

An amalgamation of all the readings they'd wanted to give me these past months and everything that had been blocked.

They called to me by name, nine voices on a wind. I knew the Fates, had studied them all my life. They were my friends when I had none.

Now, though, despite the fact that I could peel their voices apart like a frayed rope, I couldn't remember their names or the spectrums they presided over. I could remember nothing. It was all consumed by the futures they poured into me.

It was like repeatedly being held beneath water and coming up for air, the relief filling my lungs, only to be crushed tightly beneath the weight of magic again.

"Where have you been?" I asked the Fates. "What has been keeping my readings from me?"

Stars spiraled above, tails of starfire burning behind them as they swam along a cosmic current. Deep sapphires and navy blues wavered between the voids, looking as soft as velvet as the trails of the stars' paths faded into blurred images.

"Can you tell me of the Angel emblems? Of the Angelcurse?"

A star cascaded through the sky, and in the stream of its fiery-white tail, a reading formed. A face I knew.

"Ophelia," I whispered as her likeness was conjured as clearly as in a looking glass. A second form swept up beside her, the two talking hurriedly even as the image solidified.

"Jezebel?"

The Revered I wasn't surprised by—she was the one I'd been searching for—but her sister…

I thought back to the Seawatcher challenge on those platforms when Jezebel had demonstrated an unseen level of power, commanding the dying spirit of an alpheous. Oh, how there was so much we'd yet to discover about the younger Alabath's fate.

Creeping closer to the image, I picked it apart. They locked hands—no. There was something held between them. A weapon? It wasn't Ophelia's sword or spear. Perhaps it was one of Jezebel's.

Strength radiated between the sisters, bolts of fiery-blue lightning cracking the flat gray sky. In its wake, thick droplets of gold poured from clouds I couldn't see, gilding their skin.

A Fate's voice whispered around me, one that sounded like the moon cleaving apart in the night. "The sisters promised by legend. Constellations foretold of them."

"Constellations?" I asked, as I studied the lack of landscape wherever Ophelia and Jezebel were. Another streak of lightning shattered the shapeless murky-gray world.

"They command the stars to fall and rise," the Fate whispered.

Shivers traveled down my spine, but the voice faded into the blue velvet sky around me, and the trail of starfire wiped away the sisters, whizzing back into the heavens.

"Where were they?" I muttered. My lungs clenched as if held beneath water again.

Until a spark burned to my left, and I whirled to see a second fortune being written?—

I gulped down air. "What?"

Titus's form was within the burning frame. I nearly stumbled back a step.

The first time I saw Titus in a reading, I was eight years old. He'd been conducting his own session on the balcony of his manor. He showed up for me two weeks later at Lumin Temple.

In that reading, he'd been lighting incense and candles, staring contemplatively at the stars as he waited for his Fate to come to him.

Now, though, he raged.

The chancellor stormed through the manor, shattering an ancient vase and dislodging a bust of Valyrie from its stand.

"No!" I yelled, lunging for the image.

He littered his foyer with shards of glass, clay, and ceramic, bare feet slicing across the sharp edges. But he didn't so much as flinch.

"Madness will descend upon him," a darker voice, tinged with malice and the secrets the world hid, hissed into my mind. Angels, I wished I could decipher which Fate the voices belonged to as I usually could, but there was too much right now.

"Show me how!" I demanded. My shoulder burned as if my skin was set aflame. "Show me the path he walks to break into such instability."

"You want to see what breaks him?" the Fate asked, voice whistling through me.

"Yes, please," I answered, straightening my spine, attempting to show the Fate the respect they deserved though panic stole through me.

"Look here," the Fate said, behind me rather than within my head this time.

I spun, and saw?—

"What?" I gasped.

A silver-framed mirror had appeared. And my image stared back.

"You will be the ruin, Vale," the Fate said. Then, just as the other had, this second celestial voice faded into mist.

And before I could process anything it had just said, my other seven ties crashed into me. Stars showered from invisible heavens, readings burning through their tails of white fire and sucking all the air from the realm.

Six figures burst to light in one, casting beams of power cyclically between them, then sprinkling them among mountain peaks.

In the tail of another star, separate and yet somehow connected, seven figures rose to absorb those drops of borrowed magic. An iron chain strung between them.

In the third trail of starfire, hordes of people stood with their faces tilted skyward. Starsearchers, maybe? Halos framed their heads—eleven stars, with a gap where a twelfth belonged.

Winged creatures soared through another, swooping so low I nearly ducked, though they couldn't touch me.

The fifth reading showed the face of a girl I missed with every sliver of my Spirit. A boy I didn't know followed quickly after, the two intertwined.

Cliffs towered in the sixth, waterfalls carving through their ledges and cascading to the ground, an indiscernible profile within the waves.

And in the last?—

Blood.

So much blood coated the world. The cypher trees rose through it, their leaves dyed crimson. The earth shuddered at its touch. Skulls and ancient bones were painted, sand dunes soaked and heavy with the weight of lives. Every star winked out in the sky; every feathered wing dissolved to dirt.

The pressure of so many readings bore down on me. I clasped my hands to my ears to drown out the voices of the Fates, but it didn't matter. They were within me, tangling into a single, relentless ring.

Those voices pressed closer, the brightness of their readings blinding me.

Until all I knew was a ceaseless white light and a high-pitched chiming that echoed in my ears.

Until I thought this reading would kill me.