“Be kind, Kathryn,” Mitera, no, Kate, dammit! said. “The boy has been through a lot.”
“I am many things, Kate, but I have never been called ‘kind’,” the old woman snapped.
“Oh, stop it you two! Can’t you see the poor boy is confused?” the younger one said approaching me.
“I’m Kitty,” she said, crouching beside me, resting her elbows on her knees. She cocked her head sideways in a move that reminded me of how Betts had considered me when we first met.
“You could say we’re family, adelfos,” she said, smiling brightly. I glanced at the three women in confusion. The only family I had was V-no, Luke dammit!
“We’ve brought you here to give you a choice,” Kathryn said grouchily. “And we should get on with it.”
“We are sorry for what you have endured, Elex,” They said in creepy unison.
“That’s not my name,” I responded automatically, just as I had with Luke. “Do you guys practice that?” I asked, my gaze traveling back and forth between them. “’Cause it’s fucking weird.”
“No, but we frequently act in concert,” Kate said. “We brought you here because we believe in free will.”
Kitty nodded. “We need your help to set right a great wrong brought on your people, but we can’t do so without your permission,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We can help you unlock your potential, Elex,” Kitty said. “You could be one of the greatest Tesseris Mageia this world has ever seen and can help the Illyrians restore balance to the world.”
“But it comes at a price,” Kathryn added. “There must be balance in the world. We can’t be granting power to every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
“W-what?” I started wondering if the blow I’d taken on the head was more severe than I’d thought. I could hear her words, but they just didn’t seem to make sense.
Kate held her hand out to me. I took it without thinking, her hand warm and strong in my own. “Walk with me, my son,” she said.
She led me through the rows of books to the boulevard outside the door, leaving the other two bickering behind us. Sunlight shone brightly on the freshly cleaned streets. She led me over to a fountain from which clear fresh water burbled.
“Sit, please,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of the fountain.
I could feel the slight spray of the water as the wind shifted and looked around at the empty street. It felt absolutely real.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, half out loud.
“It was, indeed,” Kate said, smiling sadly. “It was one of my favorite cities, until the war came.”
Now that we were closer, I could see that she really wasn’t Mitera. Her eyes were a little more closely set, her nose a tad bit longer. Her mannerisms and speech, though, were so similar to my mother’s that it frightened me.
“What does any of this have to do with me? And why do you look so much like my mother?”
Kate plucked at the material of her blouse, twining the material between her fingers repeatedly and I realized with a start that she was nervous.
“We saw the possibility of this future long ago, and we tried to head it off,” she said. “But Elus… well sometimes, he is a royal pain in the ass.”
She smiled, and I somehow saw an echo of Kitty’s grin in her face.
“We had a fight, and he decided he would do things his own way,” she said.
“Wait…wait… ‘Elus’? As in, the god of the Elusians?” I growled.
She nodded, sighing slightly. “I’m doing a poor job of explaining this.”
Kate stood and began pacing in front of the fountain.
“We are Hecate, goddess of magic, spinner of fates,” her eyes, which had first appeared a startling green like Mitera’s had been seemed to darken, and her voice swelled with power. Darkness swirled in her eyes; tiny flecks of light seemed to shine from within.
