Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Bloom
Fire and Stolen Threads
The three sisters wove in unison, their fingers dancing a ritual of possession. Threads of ink and silver spiraled from their hands, coiling around the single strand of my hundredth life. Once the weave was complete, I would be erased. One of them would wear my skin.
I’d struck first. The cuffs fell from my wrists, clattering against stone.
The sisters froze, their eyes widening in disbelief. That hesitation was all I needed.
I had unbound the spells in the cuffs hours ago, while being dragged through the forest. In silence, while I’d unraveled their magic thread by thread, I’d woven my own mimicry in its place. The sisters had failed to tell the difference.
I am Queen of the Underworld. True mate to the God of Death.
No one binds the Weaver of shadow, death, and life.
“She broke the cuffs!” Clotho shrieked.
“Keen observation. I applauded you,” I replied.
My teeth sank into the heel of my palm. Pain and blood bloomed.
My fingers flexed at lightning speed as I began to weave.
Crimson and golden threads erupted from my bleeding fingers. Three circles formed in the air around me, defensive barriers pulsing with defiant power.
“Stop her!” the sisters shrieked, their harmony shattered.
Atropos lunged from her seat, shears aimed at the harp holding the last thread of my mortal life. She would sever it now—before I could intervene.
Clotho hurled razor-sharp threads at me. They struck my first defensive circle in a spray of inky sparks. A few cut through, grazing my arms and cheeks with searing lines. The Fates were incredibly powerful.
Lachesis wove something more insidious—a net of dark threads meant to ensnare my mind, to paralyze my will, to force compliance.
My second circle of threads crashed into Clotho’s assault, tangling with hers in a crackling struggle for control. Sparks showered the cavern.
My third circle shot toward Atropos. It struck her mid-leap, slamming her against the cave wall just as her shears neared my life thread. Stone cracked behind her. She screamed, thrashing against the bonds of my weave.
The wind of my own power wrenched the harp of my threads toward me. I caught it, my blood smearing across its glowing strings.
Lachesis’s mind-net reached for my mind. I wove a counter—crimson and obsidian threads that absorbed her magic and twisted it back upon itself. She hissed as her own spell recoiled.
I wove without pause, my hands rotating against each other, as I drew out every thread tied to my existence from the harp—all ninety-nine knots, all one hundred strands.
Weaving songs rose from deep within me, words of ancient knowing waiting to be remembered.
“Blood of queen and blood of bride,” I sang, a new thread pulling free, “what was hidden now resides.”
Clotho’s threads sliced into my shoulders and arms. Blood welled. I did not stop but turned the blood to crimson threads.
“Ninety-nine deaths she did survive,” the second line came, another thread yielding, “the hundredth life shall stay alive.”
“Stop her from speaking prophecy!” Atropos screamed, still pinned to the wall. “Silence the song!”
Lachesis wove frantically, hurling every complex pattern and binding spell she possessed—attacks that burned, cut, and sought to strangle.
“What Fates have woven, I untwine,” I continued, my voice gaining strength as the third thread pulled free, “this destiny is only mine.”
The threads of my past lives loosened, their knots unraveling. With each line, I felt the curse’s grip weaken.
“No sister’s shears shall cut my cord,” the fourth verse blazed as Atropos finally broke free and lunged. My threads caught her mid-air, coiling around her throat. “By shadow, light, and death restored.”
“She has become too powerful!” Clotho wailed, her attacks growing desperate.
“Impossible!” Lachesis snarled in fear.
“The curse that bound me eon long,” I sang the fifth line, feeling the weight in my blood begin to crumble, the fog of a hundred lifetimes lifting, “now breaks beneath this weaver’s song.”
“That is what we crafted the curse to prevent!” Clotho shouted. “We should never have brought her here!”
“She deceived us!”
I’d outsmarted the Fates.
“A deceiver!”
“A sinner!”
I was almost there. Almost free. The threads of all my lives were gathered in my hands now, a radiant, pulsing weave of power.
“What once was scattered, now made whole,” the sixth verse rang out, my voice echoing through the cavern like a struck bell, “one body, power, mind, and soul.”
The sisters united their assault. Their combined threads crashed against my defenses like a battering ram. I felt the immense weight of their will, the sear of their magic cutting from all sides. Blood streamed from countless wounds, but I held firm.
The final line rose from within me.
“By blood and thread and ancient right,” I sang, and as the last word left my lips, I felt the curse—the chain of a hundred deaths—shatter completely, “the Queen and Goddess returns to claim her might.”
Chains fell away. My full power rose, a torrent rushing through my veins, filling every hollow part of me.
“You dare?” Atropos hissed, straining against the threads that still held her.
“And with this final thread,” I called out, my power rocking the very walls, “I bind your tongues. You will not speak of me—to god, mortal, or anything in between.”
I cast the binding thread toward all three. It coiled around their throats, sealing their mouths, silencing my secrets forever.
“You’re just as trapped as we are!” Lachesis screamed. “You’ll never leave this room. An entire Fae kingdom guards this place.”
Power brimmed within me. More than I had ever held. More than I had ever dreamed.
The third circle of my threads erupted into flame.
Not ordinary fire. This was the fire of the goddess of death—a blaze that could destroy what should never be destroyed, burn what should never burn.
The flames caught the other threads in the cavern and spread instantly. Within seconds, the entire chamber was ablaze. Billions of threads igniting, the Fates’ most cherished treasure curling to ash before their eyes.
I burned them. I did not cut. The distinction mattered. Cutting would sever lives. Burning simply erased the predetermined paths. Now mortals and immortals alike would write their own stories instead of following scripts spun by the Fates. They could own their destiny. Choose wisely.
“What have you done?” the sisters screamed, watching eons of work turn to cinders. “Our work! Our purpose!”
“And who are you to decide everyone’s fate?” I said coldly. “Who gave you that right?”
“You have unbalanced the universe!” Clotho cried, tears curving through the ash on her cheeks. “This was what we saw! This was why we cursed you in the first place!”
“And here I am,” I said, watching the destruction I had wrought. Flames reflected in my eyes, burning thread-ash swirling through the air like black snow.
They’d seen the end of the threads. They’d been right about what I would do.
Their attempt to prevent it had caused it.
“I’d love to chat more, ladies,” I said. “But I have somewhere to be.”
I turned and lunged toward the tidal pool at the chamber’s heart. The flames parted for me—my flames.
I dove.