Chapter 1
Nyssa
“Even gods can break,” they whispered.
The eerie tri-layered voice of the sisters followed me everywhere. It haunted me — asleep, awake, it didn’t matter — not even now, months after their trial ended. Even my dreams were not safe from their meddling, for this was surely a dream.
I had no recollection of summoning them. I had no memory of shadowstepping either; of entering the void between places; the lining between realms.
Nowhere.
And everywhere.
It had only been a week since I last heard one of their infuriatingly cryptic warnings. One week since the Selection Ceremony and all that befell it.
“Binds, hides, seams,” I whispered, remembering, watching a lock of my sable-coloured hair drift past my face, caught in some invisible current. “Make time bleed.”
“Ah, and you did dio hēmisysa,” Atropos declared. “Your blade cleaved time, just as my shears sever lives — easily and instinctively.” She hovered before me, her waxen lip curling up at one corner. “One, two. Yours, mine,” she sang. “Kronos, Char—”
“Stop it!” I yelled into the endless void. My rage-filled, panic-stricken voice echoed until it faded into the nothingness. “Do not say his name.”
The Fates exchanged a knowing look.
“His thread was always so vibrant,” Atropos murmured.
“And short,” Lachesis interjected.
“Destined to be cut short at its brightest,” Atropos finished.
“Stop it,” I pleaded, my knees threatening to buckle under the weight of my despair.
“Did you know,” Clotho began, her tone gentler and warmer than that of her sisters.
She leaned in conspiratorially, as though she were about to let me in on some grand secret.
“That when your souls whispered to me from beyond the endless void… when I first spun them into existence — his first, yours later — your thread wrapped itself so tightly around his I could barely separate them?”
A sob clawed its way up, burgeoning in my throat, like even the emotion was trapped in this nightmare, too. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
I was powerless to escape from this dream — their words. I had to hear them, endure them, and feel the pain of losing him all over again because of their terrible, honest cruelty.
“Even gods can break,” they said again as one, slowly drifting away — but not before they could sing another obscure song that my fresh haze of grief made difficult to remember.
“One vanished, one tethered, one tortured.
Two sundered, re-bound, reinforced.
Five surrendered,
Four unaltered,
Three protected,
Two defended,
One left to be slaughtered.”
“What does that mean?” I cried. “Please! Tell me what you mean.”
Atropos fixed her empty, black sockets on me. “It means, dio hēmisysa, that Fate is stirring.”
“Coming to collect,” Lachesis added, her sharp gaze somehow less piercing than the hollow glare of her eyeless sister.
“And even gods can break,” Clotho whispered as they faded into the darkness.
I registered a soft, downy dampness pressed against my face before I could even open my tear-drenched eyes. My pillow, soaked with the physical manifestation of my grief, tried to cling to my cheek like the memory of the man I mourned, as I jerked upright — but gravity inevitably won out.
Those same four words tumbled out of my mouth in rapid succession, the tempo and tenor rising with every repetition.
“Even gods can break,” I sobbed. “Even gods can break.”
“Shhh, it’s alright.” A soothing, caramel-scented voice whispered in the dark. A voice I would recognise anywhere, even in this deep, suffocating state of woe.
Two strong, warm arms wrapped themselves around my chilled body, pulled me close, and tucked my head under a rough, stubble-covered chin.
Caelus.
“What did they mean?” Salty tears cut tracks down my cheeks as I leaned into his embrace.
“What did who mean?” he asked softly.
Confusion swirled within my chest like ink in water, but it was muted. Foreign. His.
The silence stretched as I stitched my thoughts together, weaving them into a tapestry I could vocalise while his patience held the space for me to do so.
I let the steady tempo of his heartbeat soothe me until my own slowed to match.
I leaned into the sense of safety and surety his arms offered — a feeling that was just as foreign as his emotions lingering beneath my breastbone.
It was a feeling that had evaded me almost my entire life.
He exhaled deeply, fracturing the silence as his breath rushed past, tickling the outer curve of my ear.
I sniffed, no longer trapped in the throes of despondence, wiped at my eyes, and unfortunately, slid immediately into prickly irritation.
Alright, tears — you can fuck off now.
“I had a nightmare,” I finally offered, pulling back just enough to peer into his silver, newly black-rimmed eyes.
“I’m aware,” he murmured, frowning. The skin between his eyebrows puckered as his gaze flicked briefly away, recalling the last few minutes.
“You were thrashing in your sleep — crying, and singing some creepy song.” His teeth flashed briefly as he grimaced, illuminated by the light of the dying hearth.
I lurched, almost falling out of his lap and onto the floor. “Did you hear the words? The exact words?”
His frown deepened. “I’ll not forget them anytime soon, Nightshade.”
“Write them down! Quickly — it’s important!”
Caelus jolted out of bed, his urgency finally matching my own. His head darted wildly around the room, finally landing on the desk in the corner — the desk that I only just now remembered was conveniently left bare.
“Where do you keep your writing supplies, woman?” he growled, face pinched.
I shrugged. “I’ve no need for them.”
That stopped him. “What do you mean you have no need for them?”
“I write with shadows.” I shrugged a second time, a small smirk tugging at my lips.
“You write with — nevermind how incredible that is — I don’t suppose you have any grand ideas as to how I write said creepy song down? With no pen? No ink?” One blonde brow rose, his sass rising along with it, and my smirk turned into an amused scowl at its appearance.
Our gazes clashed for what felt like a small eternity, each silently taunting the other. The mingling fragrances of raspberry, vanilla, and caramel slowly filled the air, entirely bewitching in their intensities.
“Forget the ink,” he huffed as my anticipation rose — until I realised he was striding towards the open balcony instead. At the last moment, his path diverted and he faced an empty obsidian wall, clad in nothing but his tight, black undergarments.
I bit my lip, truly unable to help myself — it was a spectacular view.
“Nyssa!” Caelus snapped his fingers in my direction, laughing when I blinked sheepishly up at him. “Will that do?”
I frowned. “Will what do?”
Wordlessly, he gestured to the once-blank wall — now covered in a sizzling scrawl. The fresh lines smouldered as I approached, brows rising; the air now tarnished with an acrid scent.
Caelus had burned the Fates’ eerie song into the black stone. Dread sank its claws into my skin as I studied the words. It leached the warmth from my blood with every letter, turning my entire body cold as ice.
“This word is supposed to be ‘slaughtered,’” I murmured, tapping the last word of the song.
“Right — that makes more sense.” He slashed through the script with one lightning-tipped finger, then seared its replacement beside it. “I wondered how one was going to be laundered.”
His bewilderment was adorable — scrunched nose, pursed lips, and brows drawn. So endearing that I wished the memory of the expression could be carved into my mind as permanently as the lyrics were now carved into my wall.
I couldn’t help the giggle that flitted past my teeth, nor the moan that followed when Caelus immediately reached for my face, drawing me in for the most tender of kisses.
“Sorry,” he breathed against my lips. “I needed to see if your laughter tasted as sweet as it sounds.”
A tiny bubble of laughter escaped me again — and again, his lips smothered it against mine.
“It does.” A sweet — albeit hungry — grin twisted his face.
The tether between us swelled. His joy thrummed inside my chest, warming me — golden and light, like a warm summer day. I had almost forgotten what it felt like: joy… and pleasure.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one because Caelus spoke again.
“Nightshade,” he groaned the nickname out between clenched teeth.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed that sound.
How much I’ve missed your happiness, light, like a bubble in my chest.” He pressed a light kiss to my forehead.
“And your kiss.” His lips grazed my nose. “And how our bond hums when we touch.”
I sighed, leaning into his embrace. But the thing about bubbles is that they inevitably burst.
The smile fell from my face — slowly, then all at once — when I remembered why we hadn’t kissed, or danced, or found any small semblance of joy in the last week.
Sensing the shift, Caelus remained motionless. Wordless. Then his arms reined me in, providing a solace I didn’t know I had. A solace I knew I didn’t deserve.
I had no idea how long we stood there for, cocooned in our shared grief, but it was long enough for Velira, my bonded dragon, to fly home from wherever it was she’d been hunting.
Long enough for her to snake her serpentine head into the room and rekindle the hearth with nothing more than a soft exhale.
Long enough for my mind to play tricks — cruel, vicious tricks that sounded like whispers from the person I mourned most.
“You are not a tomb.”