Sixty-Six
S IXTY - S IX
ESTRELLA
I walked down the hillside, making my way into the valley that spread before me. Primordials stepped from the trees, emerging into the path that I walked so that they too could stare at me. The weight of those gazes upon my skin felt like the heat of a thousand suns, a judgment when I’d hoped the trials were done.
But the sinking feeling Clotho’s words left in my gut, made me wonder if maybe my trials had only just begun. Golden eyes studied me, from each and every corner of the Cradle, forming a line along the path to welcome me. By the time I finally reached Khaos and Medusa, I felt that sinking pit inside of me open into an eternal well—the depths of which I could not feel. What was this?
Khaos stepped forward, the harshness I’d come to know gone from his face. “Welcome home, daughter,” he said, closing the last distance between us. I backed away from him as his hands came to touch my face, to cradle it in a moment of intimacy he had not earned. His lips pressed together, a swallow working through his throat at my rejection. “You’re angry with me.”
“You stood there, and you watched me suffer. You never once tried to help me; you never once intervened,” I snapped, turning to look at where Medusa was cuddled into his side. She was quiet in the face of this argument, not bothering to offer any help to the father I’d never asked for. She didn’t need to help him understand, and for once, I appreciated that there was no one to help me communicate my pain.
I wanted him to hear it from me. I wanted him to hurt the way I had.
“Not all of us are as impervious to the influence of the Fates as you are, Estrella. I did what I could, when I could, without compromising your success. It was imperative that you make it here—to this place. In this moment, as you are. Had I stepped in and helped you, you never would have known what it is to stand alone. You would have never learned to trust in your own strength, and the strength of your resolve. You, and you alone, can defy them, Estrella. You and you alone can fix what we have wrought, but in order to do that, first you must kill Mab and rid the world of her stain. That is what is foretold, that is what will bring the turning of the tides,” Khaos said, his hands finally dropping to his sides as he realized I would not allow the embrace he sought.
“She is your daughter, just as I am. How can you speak of her death and not care what that means?” I asked, his impassiveness regarding Mab only confirming what I’d already suspected.
Whatever Khaos was capable of, it wasn’t the kind of love I related to. I could never condemn my daughter in that way.
“Any part of Mab that was my daughter has long since been erased. The crown she wears, the crown we fashioned for you at the insistence of the Fates, has cursed her beyond recognition. We made it so that only the child we had together could wear it without consequence. I never imagined it would be stolen or used in this way. I never thought someone would tolerate the weight of it at all, but Mab is half me, and she connected to it just enough to gain power from it, but it did not save her from the madness it causes, only delayed it. It is only a matter of time before she slaughters everyone in her path,” Khaos answered.
“You are the Primordial of chaos. Why not stop her yourself?” I asked, the words a condemnation. All the suffering he could have ended if he’d only just taken responsibility for what he caused.
“The Fates condemned us all to live out our days in the Cradle,” he said, stepping forward again. He ignored my attempt to jerk back, finally laying his palms on my cheeks. His eyes closed at the contact, a buzz of familiar energy humming through me where he touched. “We did not willingly choose to leave our children. We did not willingly abandon the only one we were capable of caring for. You believe this to be a prison where Mab sends her enemies, where the Gods and the Primordials drag those who’ve wronged them, but it was our prison first. Our dungeon that we cannot escape. We will never walk the earth so long as the Fates control us all.”
“All things must die, Estrella,” Medusa echoed, her words from the night before tickling at the back of my mind.
I was their reckoning, and they were the jailors.
Khaos turned me to face the Primordials who watched us, laying his hands atop my shoulders. “They do not watch because you’re a curiosity. They watch you because you are the only one that can free them from this pit. They watch you because you are our savior,” he said, forcing me to watch as the Primordials bowed their heads to the ground beside the path where I’d walked.
“Why would the Fates guide me here if I’m meant to kill them? How is that even possible?”
“It is possible because of the tangle they placed in my womb the night they sent me into that temple so that you could be conceived. The knot that was my price for having the daughter I so desperately craved, is the very thing that they set into motion all those years ago. You can kill them, because you are one of them, Estrella. You may be our daughter by blood, but you carry a piece of each of them inside of you as well,” Medusa explained.
“They know. They know that I’m going to be the one to kill them,” I said, the realization dawning. Their reckoning, their end.
“All things must die,” Medusa said again as Khaos turned to me, his hands leaving my shoulders.
Only one of his hands cupped my cheek this time, and I couldn’t help the way I leaned into the touch, seeking out a moment of comfort from the father I’d never known.
“I wish we’d had more time. I wish they hadn’t kept you from me for so long,” he said, his lips pursing and nostrils flaring. Alarm bells rang in my head as Medusa whimpered, the sound of a sob forcing me to turn from Khaos’s burning stare to look at her. I never saw the knife coming as she covered her mouth, only felt the blinding, searing pain as it tore through my chest. Khaos stabbed me, shoving it to the hilt as he held me still with his hand on my shoulder, his face twisting as if he’d been the one to be stabbed.
The iron lit me on fire from inside, shredding through tissue and muscle, puncturing my heart where it slowed. He pulled the knife back, a rush of blood pumping out of the hole he’d created. Staring up into those golden eyes, I watched his face twist.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes shining with unshed tears. His arm moved, as he shoved the knife into my chest again, creating another wound next to the first. I gasped for breath, struggling as Medusa came up behind me and held me up. She supported my weight, keeping me standing when my legs buckled beneath me.
“Why?” I asked, my mouth wet. The coppery taste of blood filled it as I gurgled, my hand moving at my side. Trying desperately to cling to that thread, to hold onto the bond I shared with my mate.
Caldris.
One last time, Khaos pulled his knife free and stabbed me a third time. I stared down at the hilt, at the blade protruding from my chest as Medusa lowered me to the ground finally. She lay my head upon her lap, running gentle fingers through my hair as I clung to the thread, using that bond to keep me here. To keep me from leaving him.
He would never forgive me.
Khaos knelt beside me, staring down at me as he wrapped his fingers around the knife and tore it back again. Tossing it to the side, his bloody hands came to rest on my face, smoothing hair back from my cheeks as my face wet with tears. There was so much pain, so much burning inside of me as my lungs fought for breath. As my heart pumped blood out the wounds. The golden dress was stained with red, a deep spreading pool gathering on my torso.
“Why?” I repeated, waiting for the answer to the question that they hadn’t given me. How could I save them if I was dead? And if I was meant to save them, then what was the purpose of this? What could I do in death that I could not in life?
“All things must die,” Medusa repeated, and I wondered if the words were her mind’s attempt to understand the loss. Her way of coping.
Khaos touched his hand to my wound, his human figure fading into a darkness that spread over the Cradle. Only his face remained as I choked on my own blood, a dancing whisper in the night as the thread held in my hand turned gray and lifeless. The bond snapped, my heart beating for the final time.
There was no more pain, only eternal darkness, a night sky without stars, and Khaos’s voice to follow me into death.