“Don’t you dare,” I growled, pulling her closer to my chest. “Don’t you dare leave me now. Not when I’ve just found you.”
Panic clawed its way up my throat as I felt our connection continuing to weaken. I pressed my forehead against hers, closing my eyes as I concentrated on the fading thread between us, trying to pour my own life force into it, to strengthen it through sheer will alone. I refused to accept that she could be taken from me so easily.
“You are mine,” I whispered against her cooling skin. “And I am yours. Always. The Moirai themselves declared it so.” My voice broke on the last word. “Please. Stay with me.”
The thread between us flickered, dimmed, and weakened, I gathered her closer, wings curling around us both in a protective cocoon of shadow, and made a silent vow to whatever powers might be listening. This would not be how our story ended.
Chapter fifteen
Fates Choice
Jade
Idrifted, weightless and formless. The absence of pain was the first thing I noticed. Just... nothing. The second thing I noticed was the silence, not the quiet of an empty room or the hush of early morning, but the complete absence of sound that made me wonder if I still had ears to hear with at all. The third thing I noticed was that I wasn’t breathing. Hadn’t been for...how long? Time had no meaning here. But I knew what that meant.
I was dying. Or maybe already dead. The realization should have terrified me. Instead, it settled over me with strange detachment, like hearing someone else’s bad news.
Threads of light glimmered in the distance, faint at first, then gradually more distinct as my awareness expanded. They crisscrossed the void like luminous highways, creating a grid that pulsed with gentle rhythm.
“Well, this is fucking inconvenient."
The darkness shifted, folding in on itself as three figures emerged from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Cloaked in fabric that seemed woven from shadow and starlight. Their faces were partly obscured by their hoods, but I recognized them instantly.
The Moirai. The Fates.
Anger surged through me, I’d always been told death brought wisdom, perspective, some grand understanding of life’s mysteries. But all I felt was pissed off.
“Was this the plan all along?” I demanded. “Hook me up with the perfect mate just so I could get murdered by my psycho ex three days later? What kind of joke is that?”
The sisters remained motionless.
“Did you know?” I pressed, moving closer to them. “When you bound us together, did you know this would happen? That Trevor would trap Magnur? That I’d end up with a knife in my back?”
One sister tilted her head slightly, the gesture neither confirmation nor denial.
My fury expanded, filling the emptiness around us. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to him? ” My voice cracked. “Now he gets to spend his life grieving me? Blaming himself? That’s your grand design?”
I would have cried if it had been possible in that moment, maybe Ziggy had been right to not go to the sisters and I should have avoided them as well, then at least Magnur would be free.
“Fuck that,” I spat. “And fuck you three for letting it happen.”
The sisters remained unmoved by my outburst, waiting with patience that only immortal beings could possess. My anger burned hot and bright in the void, but like all fires without fuel, it eventually began to fade, leaving behind embers of grief and frustration that glowed painfully in my chest.
When I finally fell silent, Clotho spoke. “Your thread was never singular, Jade,” she said. “Always tied to two paths. Always.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, exhaustion replacing anger.
Lachesis raised her hand, and suddenly I could see it, a golden thread extending from my chest, but at a certain point, it split perfectly into two identical strands, running parallel to each other.
“One path led to Magnur,” she explained. “One to Trevor. Both woven long before you drew your first breath.”
Atropos, stepped forward. “Trevor’s lineage carries the blood of those who once bound your mate. Their fates have been knotted together for centuries, and when you entered the pattern...” She shrugged. “You became the point where all threads converged.”
“So this was inevitable?” I asked, hating the helplessness in my voice. “I was always going to end up dead in a warehouse?”
“This moment was always one of many possibilities,” Clotho said. “One thread leads forward into the life you began with Magnur. Another leads into darkness and then back to light in another time, another place.”
“If you let go now,” Lachesis added gently, “you and Magnur will meet again in another life.”
