“It’s not an easy medicine to take,” Seren explains. “You’ll slowly gain your power back, and now that you’ve talked to your mother, I can release her power to you as well. It will take time, but all will be revealed to you slowly.” She gives me a small yet sad and serene smile. “Anwen and I will still be around to help guide you, but we— We might be…” She hesitates and looks to the left, showing she’s about to lie.Thank you, Lucifer.“Different.”
Okay, not completely a lie, but she’s keeping something from me. Then again, she is a fucking Fate, it wouldn’t be the first time.
“Just trust yourself that there will be trial and error for you, just as there was for us. Think of it as a rite of passage. But you will have your men to help you.”
My lip curls as I give her a confused look. “Huh?” I shake my head, trying to clear the cobwebs that are obviously there because I have no idea where she’s going with this. “What do you mean?”
She takes my empty cup and sets it on the table. “You will see when it is time. First, let me.” She cups my bad shoulder with her hands, and heat and light engulf me for a few seconds before she smiles. “There. All fixed. Now come. We need to release your mother’s magic and get you back to your group.” She stands, pulling me with her, and leads me to the room Anwen disappeared into.
I gasp as I walk in and see floating glowing tendrils everywhere in the room. They remind me of the tendril I saw that hung on Lilith’s demon form around her hairline, exceptthese are different colors, all different yellows, blues, and reds, like the prior Fates.
“What is this room?” I whisper, scared to disturb anything in it. It almost feels ethereal, like it’s a living and breathing room.
“This is the Mako,” Anwen answers, taking in my reaction. “This is where our power resides when we’re not actively using it. We keep it safe here, especially since there’s something else trying to gather it.”
My head whips in her direction. “Aaron?” I ask, wondering what all they know, how much Mom was able to tell them.
“Adalyn, the so-called new Fate, which we both know isn’t what she seems,” Anwen snarls.
“How did Adalyn even become a Fate in the first place if she wasn’t supposed to be?” What I’m really wondering is how we even got into this position in the first place.
“Well, honey, I know it’s going to be hard to believe,” Seren’s sarcasm rolls out as she continues, “but we had never experienced the death of a Fate until your mother. So when we had someone show up looking the way they did and with the power they possessed, we took them at their word.”
“Has she been let in here?” I ask, looking around.
“Pfft. Of course not. We’ve led her into an old dusty cave and squatted there for a week in discomfort just for an act,” Seren grumbles.
“It was the worst camping I’ve ever done, and I hope never to do it again.” Anwen rolls her eyes. “I even broke a nail living in that squalor of a cave. We might be Fates, but we don’t live like what the humans have painted us as.”
“The old crones with withered hair, blind eyes, and bad skin care. My God, could you imagine us looking like that? Bleh.” Seren visibly shakes, and I can’t help the snort that leaves me, breaking the tension in the room.
“No, we know that Aaron is trying to pass himself off as the next Fate, but we haven’t outed him,” Anwen says, grabbing a tendril gently off a wall and allowing it to wrap around her wrist.
“Passing himself off as you as well,” I mumble, and Anwen freezes.
“That’s why you wanted to see my neck,” she confers.
“He’s a skinwalker and turned into you before I came here,” I admit, pursing my lips.
“What’s the saying humans use? Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer? Well, Aaron is the worst of them all, our sister's murderer, one of the leaders of the Rebels, your hijacked father, and someone we can’t stop on our own,” Seren admits, grabbing another tendril and allowing hers to wrap around her wrist as well.
I notice they have each grabbed a tendril that matches their robe’s color, red and blue. My mother’s pale yellows continue to shift in the room, and they slowly migrate towards me, as if they know I’m in the room also.Weird.
Once they both gather around me, Anwen grabs a yellow tendril and gently wraps it around my wrist. It lightly squeezes against me, like a hug, and I feel the slight power and heat pulsating against my skin.Wow.
“It’s time, Nerezza,” Anwen says, pulling my attention back to her. Looking at her, I get a sense she doesn’t mean meeting back up with my family.
“Why do I have a sense that you don’t mean the Gauntlet?” I swallow around a lump in my throat as a chill shoots down my spine, and her tendril around her arm starts to glow brighter.
“Because you’re a lot smarter than most people, and that’s why you are the one to carry on the task of the Fates,” Seren says behind me.
I turn to look behind me and find the tendrils on my side of the room slowly draining of color, except my mother’s yellowone around my wrist, and only the red one in Seren’s hand now is glowing, highlighting her features.
She opens her mouth, and unknown words start to flow out in a hypnotic tune that immediately puts me at ease. I feel my knees loosen as my hips slightly sway to her words. I don’t know what they mean, but I feel my lips move as if I know the cadence and how the dance would go if we were in the fields of violets and wildflowers. I sway and turn to look at Anwen, seeing her side of the room mimicking the same.
I continue to sway as I feel my body become lighter, while the tendril around my wrist wraps tighter, the heat traveling up my body and deep within my soul, as if a heating blanket has engulfed my entire body while I sit in a sauna.
Only the blue tendril in her arm glows as her eyes fixate on me, and I swear, I see a tear, but I blink, and it’s gone. She throws out her arm, and to my left, a portal slowly appears before me, surrounded in blue and red magic.
