Chapter 25 #3
He almost dropped her.
“Maybe Reyna’s right and I am getting old.” He forced a laugh. “I think my hearing’s going.”
“You heard me. Marry me.” Her voice quavered as she said it, and she lifted her chin as if daring her voice to give anything else away. He set her back on her feet, his throat dry.
She brandished the strip of fabric from the oracle.
“I visited one of the tents at the festival today, and—oh my gosh! Taran, I Spun! There was this woman doing textiles demonstrations and she showed me how to use a real spinning wheel,” she stuttered through telling him about how she’d produced real Thread.
“But I can fill you in on that later, this is more important—”
“More important than restoring the health of the planet and the balance of destiny to all humankind?” he interrupted, dazed.
Cadenza had Spun. Surely the Fates would call her forward soon.
The Messengers would come to extract her vow of loyalty and she would go.
How could she not? And he had already resolved to not stand in her way when the time came.
“Yes, more important.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Look, the fabric from the oracle. It’s just like the ones they used at the handfasting booth today.
Same length and shape. The woman with the spinning wheel even saw me looking at it and assumed it was from the booth, and I thought, you know, that could be it.
That could be our answer.” She bit her lip.
“You thought if you married me, it would break the curse?”
“It works in the fairytales.” She bit her lip, the scent of her nerves coming at him stronger.
Taran shoved his hands in his pockets and tried for a joke. “Aye, maybe if we were living in a Beauty and the Beast tale. But my story isn’t that pretty. It’s more akin to a nightmare.”
“All fairytales are nightmares until you get to the end.” She slid her arms around his waist and locked her gaze with his. “I love you. Marry me.”
Oh, Cadenza. His brave, stubborn, miraculous Cadenza.
Taran yanked his attention back to the fact that she’d Spun.
Because that was what was important. The world needed that.
They should go tell his father at once. But one bright spot, one beautiful spark, pulled him away from what should have been more important.
It flared color and heat, refused to release him.
Cadenza thought he was more important. She loved him. She’d asked him to marry her. And perhaps—the knife-like sliver of hope from the night before slashed its way forward again—perhaps, he’d see the sun again. Although even if it didn’t work, being hers was enough for him.
The spark sputtered and dimmed. Enough for him, yes. But she had proposed assuming that marrying him would break the curse and they’d have a real life together.
“I cannot marry you, Cadenza,” he said. Bloody, shredding, hope.
Her smile crumpled. “Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t be fair.” He took a step back, shaking his head. “A handfasting—any marriage—to a Guardian is different than to a normal human.”
“Different how?”
“Have you never wondered why my father never remarried? A marriage to a Guardian is no easily broken thing, even beyond the grave. The Threads of the two people’s tapestries—of their fate—are woven together. The two of them are joined in a new weaving, and it can’t be unwoven.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “Isn’t that what a marriage is supposed to be?”
“You don’t understand.” He started to pace.
The garage walls seemed to shrink, his daily prison tightening its hold.
“The weaving together—it’s not some romantic metaphor.
If you marry me, and the curse remains unbroken, no matter where you go you will be pulled back here.
To me. Even if you go out in the world, to every Somewhere Else you could want, you will be compelled to come back.
You will have to return to where I am. You would be stuck with me forever—”
“Would it be so horrible to be ‘stuck with me’?” She stepped back, folding her arms across her middle.
“No, of course not, it’s not that. But I can’t marry you with that risk. It isn’t fair.”
“Taran, this is the only thing that fits the oracle’s answer.”
“The oracles have been wrong before—”
“This could break your curse, with no killing involved. You didn’t want to have to hurt anyone.” She talked over him.
“No, I know. I won’t kill Thomas to free myself.” Shocks of adrenaline buzzed his limbs. His legs twitched, and he fought to keep the ground steady.
“Then what is it? I mean, I know the timing is weird. Technically we just met a few weeks ago, and yeah, from the outside that sounds insane, but my whole world is different than a few weeks ago, and I can’t go back to you not being in it.”
Her hands flew while she talked. He reached for them, trying to explain. “It’s not the timing—”
“Then what?” Cadenza’s question echoed off the cement walls.
Taran snarled at himself and slammed one fist into the wall. Cracks spidered out through the cement. The blade of hope twisted in his veins, and he bled fear. He slid down the wall to the floor, head in his hands.
Hope. Fear. He wasn’t sure he could tell the difference anymore. They were both agony.
Cadenza knelt beside him and touched his arm. He didn’t lift his head.
“What if—” his voice broke. “What if it doesn’t work?
I haven’t believed in choices—in the power of my actions to change anything—in so long.
Then you burst into this so-called life of mine, so sure you’re making your own path.
” He finally looked up. He cupped her cheek in one hand and tucked her hair behind her ear with the other.
“Cadenza, if I choose this, and it doesn’t work, it will confirm that I don’t have any choices left to me.
That this is what the Fates have decreed for me, and I can’t change it.
” He released her face to stare at the unfeeling slab of cement where the Ferrari, no, where he, sat hidden from the sun, day after day.
“I don’t know that I could handle that.”
“Taran.” She took hold of his chin and pulled his eyes back to her. “What if it does work?”
He said nothing.
“Some part of you must have hoped. Some part of you must have still believed, or I couldn’t have woken you.
No matter what I sang. I don’t care what the Fates wove for you.
We don’t need them. We can do this without them.
I know how to Spin now, to take the pressure off.
When we break this curse, we can go anywhere.
We’ll find someplace safe to hide from the Silence.
If you want this, make it happen.” She laid the scrap of cloth in his hand. “Marry me?”
Taran held her gaze, tremors spasming through his muscles. Make it happen. The idea went against everything he thought he understood about the Fates. “In this so-called fairytale, I’m the one trapped in a tower. And you’re asking me to risk you being trapped too.”
“No.” Cadenza shook her head. “I’m asking you to choose hope.”
The sliver stabbed at him once more. Damn me for a selfish bastard. “Aye.” He gathered her close, tangling his fingers in her hair. “Aye, I’ll marry you.”