35. The Fate of the Fates
The Fate of the Fates
Rez
Idon’t know how long I sit there trying to catch flies with my jaw dropped, but Mom finally gets tired of waiting for my brain to restart.
“Bless Jillian for dealing with all of your dramatics. Please tell me you at least went into drama and didn’t waste your talents,” she says, leaning over and closing my mouth.
“Sorry to be a disappointment,” I snap. “I only gave my performances to Jillian, Lynx, and my grandparents.” I pause and tilt my head. “Or I guess I should say, the Pathmakers,” I say spitefully.
“Ahh, so you have been told some things.” Mother sucks on her teeth.
“Yeah. Let’s just say, it hasn’t been the most uplifting soul-searching experience lately.” I roll my eyes.
“I am sorry, sweetie.” She climbs down and sits down on the ground in front of me.
“I honestly didn’t want you to live this life.
If I could have prevented all of this, I would have.
As it was, I did what I could to preserve what I could.
” She gives me a sweet smile and grabs my hands.
“My time is almost up with you,” she tells me, and my heart starts pounding.
No. I’m not ready.
“I know, sweetie,” she says, running the back of her hand down my cheek.
“It’s not enough time for me either, but I’m forever grateful to my sister for preserving my power to give to you and for giving us this time.
There is something you need to know that no one else knows.
The brothers together, no one will be able to tell them apart, except for one thing.
Aaron, my killer, I marked him. No matter what skin he wears, he will always wear my death scratches. ”
I scrunch my face, and she smiles at my confusion.
“Did you not think I didn’t fight to be with you?
” she teases me. “I fought with everything I had. At the end, I cut Aaron with my nails. I’m sure it’s faint, but on the right side of his throat, collar bone, and probably a little bit on his back, he will have scratches that will always show through his skin, no matter who he is. ”
She just gave me a wild card to call this man out at all possibilities. I’ll at least be able to call him out when he tries to play Anwen again.
“Thank you.” I lean in and wrap Mom in my arms and squeeze her, tears once again stinging my eyes.
“You’ve made me so proud,” she whispers as I feel warmth flood my body along with a surge of power snaking along my veins.
It’s a shock yet pleasant feeling that reminds me of home, of love, and mom as the wind whips around me, and when I open my eyes, I’m sitting on the floor in my nursery room. Did I just receive Mom’s power?
Was this all a dream? A vision? Catching sight of myself in the floor-length mirror, the tears start streaming down my cheeks as I stare at the intricate braids in my hair.
“Nerezza?” Anwen calls out.
“Are you okay?” Seren asks, poking her head into the room. She meets my eyes in the mirror and drops down to my side, immediately pulling me into a hug. “It’s okay.”
“It was real?” I squeak as she rocks me back and forth.
“Yes.”
“My mother was really there with me?” I rub at my eyes, trying to dry them.
“Yes,” Seren says, pulling back to look at me.
“That marble sent you into a pocket of aether where time is not a thing, and you got to have time with your mother,” she explains, standing and pulling me up with her.
“As I said before, I wasn’t supposed to do that, but with Anwen’s insistence, I went, and thankfully I did because I was able to pull Liliwen’s power into that marble, save it for you, and create that pocket. ”
We walk back into their main room, where I find the scroll still moving along with my movements, and Anwen standing waiting for me. I remember mothers words and stop in my tracks before clearing my throat.
“Let me see your neck,” I order, not taking no for an answer.
Anwen narrows her eyes and hesitates, but seeing how distressed I am, she gives me a nod. “Very well.” Anwen pulls her cape to the side, allowing me to see her throat and shoulders, one at a time. I don’t see any blemish along her dark skin, and I swallow down the lump in my throat.
“I’m sorry for earlier. I-I didn’t know,” I admit, sheepishly.
“We figured you ran into your essence father, so you needed to talk to Liliwen,” Anwen says, sitting back down. This time, she points to an extra cup on the table where there were two before I went into the nursery.
“That cup is yours,” Seren says, grabbing the one closest to her and taking a seat on the sofa.
“Mine?” Heat seeps through the cup as I pick it up and sit down between the two Fates, feeling extremely raw but yet somewhat comfortable in their presence.
“Yes.”
I smell the sweet aroma and bring the cup to my lips, taking a tentative sip before gagging on the taste.
“Ugh. What is this?” The sour taste puckers my lips and wrinkles my nose.
“It’s the Devil’s Crosshairs. The antidote for God’s Trumpet,” Anwen tells me as she sips her drink.
“You didn’t expect it actually to taste good, did you?” Seren smirks behind her cup.
“It smelled good, so yeah, I did,” I mumbled before looking at the milky white concoction once again.
“Medication, especially one for removing a foul curse, is never as simple as or pleasurable as one hopes. Your powers will no longer be blocked, and they can continue to grow again.” Anwen simply raises a brow and nods her head at my cup.
I take the hint and take a deep breath to psych myself into downing this drink as fast as possible.
If I can drink Goblin sweat to save my life in Hell, I can drink this shit for my powers.
I bring the cup back up to my lips, tip my head back, and start chugging the drink as fast as I can.
The liquid not only tastes sour but also changes temperature as it hits my tongue.
Warm, ice cold, then burning hot as it hits my throat, and I almost choke, and once it hits my stomach, I get sucker punched, having the air leave my lungs.
“Easy,” Seren says, patting my back. “You’re not supposed to chug it, Nerezza.”
Anwen sighs as I have a coughing fit and takes the empty cup from my hand, setting it back down on the table.
“She’s in a hurry to get back to her family.
It is the Gauntlet after all, and we did pull her away from it,” Anwen clarifies as she stands up.
“Might as well not keep her waiting.” I’ll meet you in the room.
” She gives Seren a look I can’t decipher, then turns and leaves as I wipe the tears from my eyes.
Why does this shit burn?
“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, except these 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 yellow one 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.
“Goodbye, sister,” Anwen and Seren say together, and I turn so I can see both of them as they come together, side by side.
I don’t know why, but in my enchanted state, something nags at me that something is wrong, but it’s not enough to pull me out of whatever has a hold of me.
The room is slowly bathed in only the pale yellow after-glow, and the only other light that’s left is the small glow of Anwen’s white pentagram eye that’s slowly dimming.
No. This isn’t right.
Before I can take a step towards them, I feel the portal pull at me as my mind clears.
No! Wait!
Energy slams into me, causing me to scream as my body is hit with a thousand pins and needles bombarding my nervous system, overloading every sense in my body.
I can’t tell if I’m coming or going, dying or being reborn.
I am beyond pain; I can’t breathe or see anything.
I feel as if I don’t exist anymore, as my body just floats for I don’t know how long, until relief hits me and I feel my body give up, and the pain stops. Thank the Fates.
‘Hate to tell you this, but the Fates are now dead,’ a feminine voice trails off.
“WHAT?” I shriek, and blackness claims me.