For one second, the wings beat against her palm. She’s filled with feelings she has never known, feelings she has no words for yet. Ecstasy. Exhilaration. A sense of flying.
But then the firefly breaks free of her hand and she hears a tiny splash. A marble has fallen into the river. Bobbing along the surface, it starts to float downstream. One of the tarnished marbles. One that was not meant to stay in the river but to be rescued and sorted and delivered. This is what she is designed for, what she does. For all of eternity, she sorts the cloudy marbles from the clear—just like all the other Fates—rescuing the obscure and darkened ones, the ones that have been warped. These contain futures that may not happen on their own. They need help. That’s why she culls them and gives them to the Messengers. There is an order, a set of rules. These are not broken—have never been broken.
Corinthe leaps into the water, feeling the strong pull of the current against her legs. The marble floats closer to the edge of the waterfall. She reaches out. The marble is so close. All she has to do is grab it.
Her bare feet slip on the slick rocks of the riverbed as her fingertips brush against the smooth surface of the marble … and just then, the current sweeps it away from her.
She watches in horror as the marble disappears over the edge of the falls, into the unknown space that surrounds Pyralis Terra.
The water continues to rush around her, but Corinthe can’t move. She is struck with an icy dread. She has lost someone’s destiny.
It might have been a death, or a birth, or a meeting, or a masterpiece. Whatever the story, it is now lost forever.
Suddenly, Corinthe is ripped from the banks of the river, flung into a swirling mass of darkness. She hears screaming. Her sister Fates: are they crying out for her?
“I’m sorry!” she yells, but her voice is obscured by the raging wind.
The pain is searing. Unrecognizable. Her skin is on fire.
Voices float around her, angry and sharp.
You have disrupted the balance.
You are the first Fate to disobey …
And you will be the last.
Then: she’s on top of a building. A blaze behind her eyelids, scalding, terrible. Too much light. It’s dizzying; it makes her want to throw up. Everything is loud. And the stench. The stench is awful.
“Come,” a soft voice says, and when Corinthe looks up, she sees a beautiful dark-haired woman in a flowing white dress. The woman crouches and places an arm around Corinthe’s shoulders. Corinthe has never been touched in such a way before. She doesn’t know what to make of it—of the closeness. The woman smells unfamiliar—like river silt, and flowers, and the dust of distant galaxies.
“I’m Miranda,” the woman says, with a smile that reveals a sharp, jagged tooth. “I’ve been sent here to be your Guardian.”
Corinthe stares at her. “Why me?” she asks.
“Because, my dear, you are very, very special.” Her new Guardian takes her hand. …
“Welcome back,” a strange voice said.
Corinthe opened her eyes and the vision of Miranda—and before that, Pyralis—receded, like a tide being sucked back by the ocean, leaving only a huge, vast sense of loss inside of her. Overhead, a light fixture hung from the ceiling: iron pounded into strips and twisted to form holders for a dozen white candles.
Something heavy was draped over her body, and she struggled to push it aside.
“Slow down,” the stranger said.
Corinthe turned her head and cringed at the sudden burst of pain behind her eyes. Bright sparks danced across her vision. He wrung out a cloth and reapplied it to her head. The coolness felt so good.
The room finally stopped spinning.
The man wore a light-colored shirt, open to reveal his tan, muscular chest. Shaggy brown hair hung to his shoulders, his cap pulled low. He wore a torn goggle on one eye, and there was a large black bird perched on his shoulder, its eyes glittering as it watched her. The bird cawed softly and the man reached up and fed it something from his hand.
“Excuse the dirt. I been out on the ocean for weeks. I need a good bath and a change of clothes.” When he leaned over to press a new cool cloth to her forehead, Corinthe noticed that his uncovered eye was completely white.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice came out raspy and she swallowed against the dryness.
“You been out for a bit. Hot as desert and kicking in your sleep. Don’t worry, I gave you something for the heatstroke.”
Corinthe closed her eyes. Her mind was still cloaked in darkness; her thoughts moved slowly, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.
The gnome. The tree. The Crossroad. Flashes of pain. Towering rocks.
A knife …
Luc!
Luc pressing her own knife against her throat
Corinthe tried to sit up, but the room spun in circles and she soon gave up.
“Whoa now, not so fast. You’re in pretty bad shape. You need to rest.” The man helped her to lie back, though he propped up her head with a pillow so she could finally get a good look at where she was.
“Who are you?” Her voice cracked and she ran her tongue over the sharp peaks of her dried lips. As if sensing her needs, the man handed her a small glass he took from a cart next to the bed.
“Water,” he said.
She took the glass, and after the first sips of cold water ran over her tongue, Corinthe couldn’t drink fast enough. She emptied the glass in two long gulps, and she extended it for a refill.
“The name’s Rhys,” he said as she drank greedily. “This is Mags.” The bird on his shoulder cawed and spread her wings so that feathers framed the man’s head. “Show-off,” he muttered at the bird.
Though obviously some kind of cave, the room was well lit, outfitted with dozens of flickering candles. The bed she lay in was comfortably soft and set into a carved-out spot in the wall, as though a portion of the cave had been deliberately hollowed to accommodate it.
Thick rugs with bright patterns covered the dirt floor. Painted onto one of the rough walls was the image of a comet streaking across the sky. Colors exploded across the wall; a trail of bright orange and yellow flames streaked toward the ground.
Corinthe felt a sick feeling building in her chest. She looked away quickly, again struggling to sit up. But her arms refused to support her weight. The pillow under her head felt so soft, so inviting. It had to be the hornets’ venom, working even faster than the gnome had predicted. The weakness terrified her—it was as though her body was turning against her.
An exhaustion unlike anything she’d ever experienced made her limbs feel like lead. It was hard not to give in to the pull of the enormous bed and simply close her eyes.
Was this what humans felt like when they needed to sleep?
“How did I get here?” Corinthe asked.
“We brought you here,” a familiar voice said.
Surprise gave Corinthe new strength. She forced herself to sit up and turned around. In one corner was a stone fireplace; Luc stood in front of it, backlit by the glow. It took Corinthe a minute to decipher the expression on his face.
Hatred. It had to be. The fierceness of his eyes, the way his arms were crossed, the set of his jaw.
For a second, Corinthe couldn’t speak. “Why didn’t you kill me?” she blurted out finally. Corinthe remembered, now, how she had all but dared him to kill her. Why hadn’t he? She would have, in his place.