“Do not tell her,” Clotho warned.
“Do not fuss. She is bound by our power.” Lachesis smiled faintly. “No one breaks these cuffs. Not even the gods.”
“She will not leave this place.” Atropos chuckled in agreement. “The least we can do is satisfy her curiosity.”
“You may go, Eve,” Lachesis said.
The blind Fae turned without a word. The quiet tap of her footsteps faded up the stairs, leaving me alone with the three sisters and the hum of a billion threads.
Atropos moved to cut a single thread, her shears closing with casual efficiency. The gesture was a message: she could sever the thread of my life just as easily while I stood before them.My pulse spiked, and cold sweat dampened my armpits. I took a moment to steady my breath. I would not panic. I needed clarity, not fear.
I watched, nearly wincing, as she continued—snipping not one but hundreds of threads in one smooth, sweeping motion. Countless deaths, now unfolding somewhere in the mortal world. While humans grieved, the Fates culled mortals like a tailor trimming cloth.
The severed threads coiled away from the loom. My eyes followed as they drifted toward a cave wall and faded through it.
“They go to the archives,” Atropos said with a satisfied sigh. “That part of our work is complete.”
“So, Bloom, what have you learned so far?” Clotho, the middle sister, asked.
They knew who I was, yet they kept calling me Bloom.
I was betting they realized that my power had awoken, but they didnotknow I remembered I was Persephone. My body was still mortal, though the goddess within had awakened. That was one of the big reasons I stood here, seeing them, without going blind. I was both mortal and divine, a loophole in their ancient law.
The Fates wove destiny, but they were not all-knowing. Even they had to follow rules. And one of those rules, where I was concerned, was that no one was allowed to speak my true identity in front of me. It kept the game in motion.
And I would use that against them.
“Learn what?” I asked. “I’m nobody, a student at Reaper Academy. Why have you brought me here?”
Chapter
Fifteen
Bloom
The Factory of Fate
“And who are you?” I demanded, the question carefully balanced between defiance and the wide-eyed ignorance they expected.
Clotho’s gaze, smug and pitiless, flicked downward to her hands. I followed it.
Mythreads.
Clotho’s fingers moved in a blur, weaving with vicious focus. Around her, the threads of the masses flowed on an endless, indifferent current—automated, impersonal. A factory of fate.
But mine? Mine she wove by hand.
Lachesis waved a hand over that automated river, assigning measure through some arcane calculation—a cold, magicalprogram that dictated the length and quality of lives without a second thought.
Then Atropos moved in, cutting at random. Her shears snipped thread after thread without her even glancing at what she ended.Snip. Snip. Snip.Lives concluded with less care than a human trimming their nails.
My eyes widened as the truth sank in. The Sisters of Fate did not tend to each individual thread as the myths claimed. For the masses, it was factory work—an assembly-line with mass-produced deaths.
Millions. All the ordinary lives of ordinary people who would live and die without the Fates ever truly looking at them. Yet they still held every fate in their grasp, guided by the relentless, unfeeling machines of their craft.
“Always playing the innocent,” Atropos mused, a mocking smile touching her crimson lips. “But you know what we are, don’t you, Bloom Aurelius? From all those books you devoured in your academy library?”
“It’s a lie,” I replied, keeping my voice level despite the disgust churning within me, “that you weave every thread with care.”
