6. Maren
Maren
Love smoldered before me, the edges of her stars brimming with anticipation. “Clever little queen,” she said, lacing her fingers together against the side of her jaw and gazing fondly down at me.
It broke. It broke. It broke.
My ankle rolled under my weight. Air shot through my teeth as I stumbled, a growl ripping from my chest to mask the anger pricking the corners of my eyes.
I clamped down a grimace, ignoring the shots of pain that lanced through my bone.
I was wasting my moon-damned time standing here with the Fates.
Wasting my strength as well. “I thought my cordae was already taken from me. I felt it break,” I said, dropping to a murmur, “when he died.”
“A Naiad’s corda-cruor merely fractures when one of them crosses the sea of stars while the other lives on. That is why you cannot reach him now.” Love gestured to my ring. “But your cordae is still intact. Once you join each other in the afterworld, you will hear his thoughts again.”
“Even if I fully sever our cordae now?”
Truth tsked. “The soul rings you wear were not forged by a cordae. They were forged by a joining. His thoughts will return, should you continue to wear them.”
Death lifted ethereally from the sand, soaring to the gash at my leg. The Fates watched, their calculative eyes sharp.
“Can she make the cross with an injury such as that one?” Time asked her sisters, raising a starry brow.
“Yes,” I ground out, fixing my stare back on Love. “Tell me about your offer. Would my cordae be severed forever?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Love giggled, twisting a finger through her nebula hair. “Naiads mate for life. Your cordae his lived his life and died. You seek to cross the sea of stars with Death as your guide. Your lives would begin anew, were you to return to the living.”
She batted her lashes at me, and I waited, knowing it could not be as easy as she made it sound. Her words seemed simple enough, close enough to the answer I wanted. But I needed something more direct.
“Tread carefully, young Naiad,” Truth said, watching my gaze sink into her sister. “She might be the most enchanting, but Love is the cruelest Fate.”
“Would I be able to recordae with him?” I asked, turning my attention to Truth, hoping that of the three of them, I could at least trust her to answer me. But the Fate merely gazed back, the windless air blowing her lustrous stars about her shoulders.
“Would it change your mind, if you could not?” Time asked.
My chest lifted and fell as I heaved a short breath. A sharp knot twisted the back of my throat.
I’m in this with you, and you’ll never be alone again. Fucking never. Do you understand?
“No,” I said, pretending my voice didn’t shake. I swallowed the knot down and it tasted like betrayal. Metallic and bitter. As though I’d taken a bite from my own heart and couldn’t wipe the sharp tang of blood from my own palate. “No, it wouldn’t change my mind.”
Love tittered at me. “Then why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. But it did. It mattered. They knew it did, and I knew it, too. Knew it by the low agony in my stomach, the burn across my tongue, the hot needles pressed into my skin at the thought of what I’d willingly gift away. “I just want the truth.”
At the sound of her name, Truth finally smiled. “Oh, young mortal. Doesn’t everyone?”
“I may be cruel,” Love said with an icy glance at her sister, “but I can also be fair. You want a chance to recordae. I will allow it. Mate and cordae with any soul you please—except the one you came for. You may only bond with him again by the same means you did the first time.”
I lowered my chin, anger bubbling to my chest. “A life preserved.”
Love tittered.
Time released an impatient huff, something like envy flashing in her eyes. “Which payment will you choose?”
“Love’s,” I said breathlessly.
Truth gave a solemn nod. Time rolled her eyes.
Her ticking stars shot apart, a slow burst across the sky, scattering herself once more into the twinkling canopy overhead.
Truth’s departure was less grand. She turned and stepped into the vastness above, her edges shuttering out as though she’d disappeared behind a curtain.
Alone with Love, the Fate gave a dreamy sigh. “Tell me when you are ready, young Naiad.”
I glanced off the side of the open, dusty pathway, down to the endless stars below.
My heart raced, the feeling in my fingers dropping into numbness as I stared into the depthless wonder of stars and velvet night.
Here I stood, at the top of a precipice, knowing my safety wasn’t at risk but preparing for a fall anyway.
My limbs braced for an unknown threat. A silent enemy, an invisible war.
“Will I still love him when we return to the living?” I asked. Then, quieter, “Will he still love me?”
The weight of the cosmos suddenly dragged over me. Face Darkness in his house of night? Easy. Slay a monster lurking below the sea? I’d willingly do it again.
Permanently sever the bond between my cordae and me?
My stomach twisted into painful knots. I wished he were here. To hold my hand and help me decide. To tell me it was all right, that he would forgive me for breaking it without him.
Spinning my ring over my finger, I called his name into the void, but nothing answered.
Death nudged into my palm, deep black eyes sinking into mine.
Love tittered into the back of her hand, a coy smile revealing the flash of her teeth under a starry palm.
“You won’t reach the other side with this leg.
Once you reach the burning cosmos, you’ll have to run.
I’ll patch it for you, but it will only last a day. One sunup and one sundown.”
“Where is the sun?”
“I do not know. One of these is yours.” She glanced around at the stars. “But I do not care which.” Behind her, the sky sparkled, and I wondered whether the other Fates had stayed to watch.
“Makua Ahi is my sun,” I said. “Aalto.”
Love clasped her hands together. “Aalto! He is here.” She floated across the sky, pointing to a burning dot at the far side of the night, almost hidden in the tangled web of flickering lights.
The dust pathway led in the opposite direction, twisting out of sight. Love glanced at me. “Are you ready?”
“How will I know if he is up or down?”
Love quirked her mouth. “Time?”
The Fate didn’t appear, but Aalto blinked brighter into the sky, encircled by smaller stars like a twinkling wreath. My own personal timepiece.
“You’ve used a day already,” Love said. “Two more passes around Aalto until your time is up. Then you’ll belong to Darkness. Are you ready, mortal?”
I exhaled. Swallowed. Curled my fingers into my hips hard enough to pinch. “Yes.”
I expected a tug. A pull. The force of a broken tether like the one I’d felt on the mountain. But nothing happened.
Love stepped aside, though she’d not been in my way to begin with, gesturing down the silver dust path with the sweep of her arm.
“I didn’t feel anything,” I said, my feet suddenly too leaden to move. Shouldn’t I have felt the break of my cordae?
The Fate leveled me with a gleaming stare. “You will.” And then, with her nebulas swirling, she simply faded into the twinkling vault above.
Death nudged me again, swinging toward the path. I took a step, and he followed, wings in line with my feet. My leg trembled as I walked, though Love had stolen all sensation from my limb. Numbness seeped into my bone instead, odd and disjointed and eerie, though I didn’t stop to study it.
I moved as fast as I dared over loose ground.
Silver dust flew from under my feet. Glinting, sparkling, disappearing.
Death matched my pace with easy strokes, wings smooth as he flew beside me.
The ashy path lifted where he passed over it.
Made of the same glitter, the dusted floor seemed to reach for him, falling away as he drifted over it.
Hours passed. The glimmering star at the top of my timepiece slowly moved right.
Down. Left. And back up. We didn’t stop.
The path wound above and below and sideways, a road that turned for no reason.
We passed under a fiery star sitting close enough to warm my skin, tiny planets and debris floating in its orbit.
I wiped my brow when we finally left its heat, its blazing roar a soft wail in my ears long after it had gone.
Death stayed beside me. He slowed when I slowed, stopped when I stopped, surged when I darted ahead.
If there is a more loyal companion than Death, I’m not sure I’ve met them, but I found myself comforted at the thought that he flew with me now.
That the same silver-dusted being had flown beside Kye, even if it had been a single beat of its wings.
An astral storm loomed ahead. I watched it warily as we drew closer, a feral cloud of frost and vapor, lit from within by arrowheads of light. Shooting stars.
If the Abyssi hadn’t killed me, the bolts of fire that fell ahead certainly would. Death never wavered, unafraid of crossing underneath them. But as I neared the haze, I slowed. Silver dusted my face and hair, the burning ashes of what were once stars. Ashes of Time and Truth and Love.
Elusive scents gathered in the air, almost too faint to grasp.
The scent of rain on ancient stone, mingling with the prickling tang of sea salt.
A hint of smoke, of fire burning for eons, mixed with something sweet and fleeting like blossoms in the spring.
Summoning the remaining strands of my courage, I walked through the silver brume.
Into destiny unfolding one fateful breath at a time.
And I did not look back.