Sixty-Three
S IXTY - T HREE
ESTRELLA
The inside of the Temple of the Fates was similar to the outside, the lowest level a sprawling entryway filled with marble columns and detailed carvings. I stepped into the marble, feeling out of place in my shocking golden dress that was so vibrant compared to the white that surrounded me. But as we walked farther toward the opposite end of the room, a splash of color appeared on the backdrop.
The tapestries that hung from ceiling to the floor were larger than any I’d ever seen, larger than anything that was practical to create or even use. The colors were a myriad, splashes of every color of the rainbow mingling with the delicate golden thread that I recognized intimately.
I stepped away from Medusa where she lingered in the center of the room, drawn to the colors and the way the gold was woven into them. A part of the fabric of life but not the entirety of it, the thread was a statement of absolutes in a world of color. It was life or death in a sea of possibilities.
The bottom right of the most recent tapestry was of a woman who looked too similar to the statue in the temple, the back of my head all I could see as she studied the tapestries before her. I spun to look at Medusa, shock written into the lines of my face. All around me more tapestries descended, falling from the ceiling to line the columns and the walls.
My face peered back at me in each and every one, something I recognized even in my differences. “Is this me?” I asked, stepping away from the tapestry that had first called to me. To the right of it was the woman I’d recognized so immediately, the me of my first life.
Aella stood with Brann at her side, his figure never changing in his time that we’d spent with the rebellion. He hadn’t needed to hide who he was or what I was, instead focusing on teaching me the ways of touching magic even when it did not exist in Nothrek, purely for the sake of readying me for the day the Veil fell.
“They all are. These are your story, Estrella. All the threads and the lives that led you to this moment,” Medusa answered, but I studied the gathering of tapestries that seemed to expand with each passing moment. They hung in layers that I felt like I could spend an eternity walking through, learning the ways of my lives and the past that I could not grasp in my mind on my own.
These versions of me were strangers, and yet I recognized them all the same. I felt the pull of them on my soul, though I could not touch them. They stirred within me, the phantom of a memory that was no longer mine at all.
There were tapestries that didn’t even have me in them, aspects of fate that had been woven before my time. The lines of destiny that had guided me here twisted and knitted the world to suit my creation, and I hated every fucking second of it.
This was wrong. This level of interference and manipulation should not have been.
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. I both did and I didn’t, because none of this effort made sense with anything I could reconcile in my head. What purpose could be so great to go to this? To spend centuries manipulating the lives of thousands…
“The answers are just ahead, through the temple pass,” Medusa said, guiding me to a narrow passage that ascended the stairs. From the way the temple had been carved into the mountainside, I knew that there were three main vestibules to the temple.
“You’re not coming with me?” I asked, almost ashamed of the way my voice cracked. I’d known as much, or should have anyway. They’d told me this was a journey I had to make alone.
“I will see you very soon, daughter. I will be waiting for you within the Cradle, but the words of the Fates are for you and you alone to hear,” Medusa said, stepping up to the wall of the temple beside us. It opened for her, letting her step into the sunshine in a beautiful valley, filled with a waterfall and still pond, an Eden within Tartarus.
I took to the stairs the way I’d entered this Hel.
Alone.