“Unacceptable!” Clotho hissed. “It is forbidden!”
“She is like us,” Lachesis said, her amber eyes narrowing. “Which makes her dangerous.”
“You know who you are now, don’t you, Bloom?” Atropos taunted. She still followed the rules—even here, the cosmic law held. She would not speak my true name.
The final mortal thread—my one hundredth life—still moved through Clotho’s spindle, but it was drawn taut, thinner than the others, fragile as a breath. I feared it would snap before Atropos ever lifted her shears.
My heart turned to ice as the full truth sank in. They had brought me here to make that final cut. To end my hundredth life and ensure there would never be a hundred and first. Then the long, central thread—Persephone’s existence—would unravel completely.
I would be gone forever.
I kept my face blank, even as my pulse ran wild, even as cold panic threatened to paralyze me.
“Remembering won’t lift the curse,” I said, as if discussing a stranger’s fate. I would not let the sisters see a single crack. “You fooled him. You fooled everyone into believing that once I remembered, the curse would break. It was always a ruse. That way, you ensured it never could be.”
“Clever, aren’t we?” Atropos purred.
“Well, where are our manners?” Lachesis waved a hand, and a goblet floated toward me. It hovered inches from my lips. “We offer our honored, clever guest a drink. You must be thirsty.”
My throat was dust. I hadn’t had water for hours. But as I inhaled subtly, the scent of the liquid reached me—Lethe water, essence of poppy, extract of morpheus root.
Drugged. To make me compliant. To erase what I’d fought to remember.
I, Persephone, understood herbs and plants and poisons better than my own reflection. That knowledge lived in my blood, part of my essence as the Goddess of Spring. It was aninsult that they thought they could deceive me with something so obvious.
“How kind,” I said, my voice cold. “But I am not thirsty.”
“Now you are being rude,” Lachesis scolded, the goblet still hovering.
“Says the kidnapper,” I replied.
“Now she bites,” Lachesis snickered, finally waving the goblet away.
“She’s in this room,” I scolded.
“Your bite won’t leave a mark, girl,” Atropos snickered, “and your cry won’t reach him. You are already here, outside his protection. You wear cuffs woven with the most potent binding spells in existence.”
All three sisters grinned at me then, and I saw what lay beneath their almost-human facades. Four rows of jagged teeth in each mouth. Ancient, inhuman, and hungry.
They were done playing nice.
Not that they ever had been.
“You’re the most talkative of the sisters.” I angled my chin and trained my gaze on Lachesis.
“Keen observation,” Lachesis said. “I am also the most sympathetic to your situation. That is why I offered the drink. I did not wish for you to feel the agony, not like all the times before. Ninety-nine deaths, Bloom. Some lasted hours. Some, days. I was trying to spare you that.”
She leaned forward, her amber eyes brightening like embers.
“But you had to be difficult. You had to make this unpleasant. So be it. Pain is no stranger to you, is it?”
I stepped back, fear choking my throat. “What are you going to do to me?”
The sisters traded a look. Some silent communication passed between them. Then Lachesis sighed with theatrical reluctance.
“Very well. We will tell you, as a final courtesy. Your thread ends today… and mine begins.”
She smiled while I blinked in confusion.
