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Fate.
I knew it instantly. Intuitively. Although the tattoo on my back stayed completely still, as if something about the air here had stifled it. Muted it.
If she was Fate, then who—?
“I would say meet my sister, Free Will, but she’s not one to engage in proper etiquette on command,” Fate said, nodding at the woman made of colorful light.
Free Will. I’d never heard mention of such a thing in human—or almost human—form. Maybe I’d delved further than I was supposed to, or maybe Fate was playing some kind of twisted joke on me in my most pressing moment of need.
Fuck that. There was no time for that.
“I’ve come to request a bond,” I said, lowering my sword.
Fate raised a pair of sharp-edged eyebrows. “A bond? With whom?” She made a show of swiveling her head to scan our surroundings. “Unless I am mistaken, General Steeler, you came in here alone.”
General Steeler. Those two words rattled through me, mounting the fury I was trying so hard to contain. This was who’d given my name to Queen Mydusia, claiming I’d win the most battles and wars out of any other candidate. This was the reason I had an oath stamped on my back. The reason I’d already taken so many lives and was destined to take so many more by the end of mine.
The reason I’d have to kill Rayna if I looked upon her.
As of now, at least.
“You’re Fate.” I clutched Rayna’s last words in my hand, her name whispering through my veins. “Surely you know exactly who I want a bond with.”
“One would think I’d know everything, yes,” Fate sighed, “but my sister’s light makes such a thing impossible. See how it changes, casting different colors and shades on my stone? For instance, this here is a life—” She nodded at the nearest column, at all the intricate twists and twirls of images carved into it. “—destined to perish at the hands of a lover. Or so I would have thought. It’s not set in stone yet, because the colors of their choices keep changing.”
I stared at that nearest column, digesting that it was… it was someone’s past, present, and future, right in front of my eyes. The etchings in the quartz climbed all the way up until a spot right above my head, where it faded into nothing but smooth quartz. A blank canvas.
“Would you like to see yours?” Fate asked.
I stiffened, muscles tensing. “Only if you’ll tie my future to Rayna Drey Reeve’s. That’s all I came here for.”
Fate’s mouth ground itself into a frown.
“I would not suggest making that a formal request, General Steeler. Your desired vigate is not here, meaning my official answer will be no. And once it’s a no, I’m afraid I must carve that answer into stone.”
At that, she finally brought her hands out from behind her back and raised a sharp, sparkling chisel.
It took everything in me not to back away, even though I held a weapon of my own. This here was not an entity I could kill, I knew, and that there was not a normal chisel. Clearing my throat, I said, “Rayna’s not here because she’s being held against her will or else she would be.”
“Against her will…” Fate mused, amethyst eyes drifting to the paper in my hand. To Rayna’s handwriting. “What say you, sister?”
The woman made of painted light didn’t turn, though her singing dropped into garbled words as her fingertips brushed over glass with increased fervor. The light from the window eddied into a storm of color at her touch.
“Hmm.” Fate nodded. “Yes, I agree.”
“What did she say?”
“That no walls or chains can take away someone’s will. Not truly. If the one you love wanted to be here, she would.”
And with a grinding sound, Fate turned to walk away.
No. My fists tightened. I couldn’t fail Rayna like this. Couldn’t walk out of this temple without giving us a fighting chance. Everything else was in line—my army ready, weapons prepared—but this one last thing could mean the difference between it all being worth it and it all crumbling between my fingertips.
If the one you love wanted to be here, she would.
Bullshit. The words clutched in my hand proved otherwise. So—
“Why don’t you ask her that yourself?” I called after Fate.
