Grunting, they lugged the fates’ motionless bodies over to theprepped spots. Elysia’s nails tapped against the empty potion bottle on her belt. Maya’s famous glue. It didn’t matter how powerful you were—that shit worked.
Elysia leaned back on her heels, taking in the sight of the slumped fates stuck to the concrete floor. Lucy and Jessa crouched, pulling the fates’ arms behind sturdy warehouse support poles, and chaining their wrists and ankles.
Knowing what came next, her emotions slid down and away, leaving her functional but cold. Cold was easier than scared. Because shewasscared of what came next—but she’d met death and knew what awaited her. No matter what, she was going home today. She just wasn’t sure how she was arriving. Her foot tapped, eyes narrowing on the chains, wondering if they’d hold.
Her foot tapped again. Time for them to wake.
“Thirty seconds, everyone.”
Daphne continued to work, her body swaying as she lost the strength to stay upright. She sank onto her side, exhausted, but not done yet. Jessa glanced back at Daphne, confused that she was still summoning, but the bartender stayed where she was, returning her gaze to the fates.
Elysia rested in front of the fates when their eyes opened. Down on one knee with her dagger prodding at Adla’s cheek, she forced them to meet her gaze.
“Tell me where the talisman is.” Despite the quiet chill in her voice, her demand still made Adla smirk.
The blade scraped a thin line of blood as Adla looked off to her siblings and laughed.
Skiel shook their head, their long blonde braid swaying. “She thinks she can harmus. We are endless, child. No matter what you do today, we will go on tomorrow and every day after that. We do not fear pain or our end.”
“Is that so?” The flat part of her blade quieted Skiel’s lips.
They spat their words around steel. “You could have become agoddess. Now you’re just another woman who gave it all up for aman.” Skiel’s stare bore down on her, condescension snarling out.
Elysia stared at them, disgusted. “All your fucking bullshit. It never ends.” Without another word, she dove into all three fates’ psyches at once, searching for not a secret, but something more. It was her talisman they hid, and she would find it in their abyss.
She’d loved chasing secrets. The thrill and danger of the trail, the satisfaction of stealing and escape. But now she knew what it was she truly sought:power.
Power that would take her from fragile mortal to nearly untouchable god. The high of it swam through her like ecstasy, the promise twisting her reason. She spun through the thick molasses of their psyches, discovering what it was to be ancient beyond measure. The hopes and fears that had crumbled to dust with their humanity. How they saw puppets instead of souls and games instead of lives. How the gods were weighed down with the threat of death while the fates did as they pleased, threading wars and famine and loss beside joy and triumph.
Someone put their cold leather hands on her skin, the touch so distant it barely registered. There was a prick on her arm, warmth trickling down and pooling at the edge of her glove. The strange sensation drew her long enough to refocus her scattered, immaterial self. She’d been warned that to swim through the fates’ psyches would be akin to warping through time—ill-recommended and likely to leave her broken or lost forever, unable to find her way back out. She was everywhere and nowhere at once, powerful, and bereft.
Tunneling through their waters, she left the shallow puddle of the fates’ inner machinations and began to hunt for the object that was hers to claim. Time extended dangerously, but she couldn’t leave until she found it. The shell of her body sagged, but that didn’t matter. She had no body now. And this would all be for naught without the talisman. The sharp pricking dug in again, and a bell rang somewhere outside of her. A signal for her to come back to herself.
She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t leave.
Consciousness shot like an arrow through them all until thearrowhead pinged off something heavy and iron. Invisible hands groping, she tried to pick it up, lost to the fact that it wasn’t real, but merely the memory of what she sought. Again, she put her hands on it, prying with all her strength as the bell grew louder and louder while a hot, sticky substance streamed down her arm.
She needed it. It was hers, and it needed to come with her.
The whisper of a soothing, dark melody touched her spirit, and her left arm burned. Familiar, she listened, relaxing into its enchantment, and loosening her grip on the object in her hands. Dark and powerful, she wanted this even more than the power she’d been searching for in the abyss, so she followed it. Out of the thick, endless well of fate, and back into the present now.
Gulping for air like she’d truly been underwater, she re-emerged.
The Doorman held Elysia’s bloodied dagger, her face pale and dark eyes relieved. Jessa exhaled, chucking the bell she had been ringing like it could wake the dead to the floor and grabbing at the back of her head with her elbows wide. Glancing down at her blood-soaked arm, Elysia barely registered the pain. Blood streamed over the golden strands on her arm. The strands burned wildly, glinting and shimmering as if alive. She had been in their minds for hours.
Shaking off the fog, she strode to the fates before she could lose her nerve.
It was time.
Ignoring the vitriol spewing out of the fates’ mouths, Elysia tore the old golden-bronze scissors from her belt. She’d been to enough executions that she knew better than to talk or hesitate. Bracing herself for what was to come, she lifted the scissors like a dagger, ignoring how they hummed in warning against her mortal touch, put one hand on Skiel’s shoulder, and plunged.
Chapter 43
The scissors bouncedoff Skiel’s chest, the gods-ending magic reverberating back up Elysia’s arm with shocking speed. Doubling over in pain, she grunted as the scissors clattered out of her hand.
The voice she’d been waiting for finally emerged from the cacophony like a peal of traitorous bells. “You knew it wouldn’t work, but still you tried.”
At least she’d expected this Blatz to double-cross them. Funny thing about lying to a ripper who had grown up feeding on emotion and information—it was possible—but it wasn’t easy.
