42. Unhappy Fortunes
Unhappy Fortunes
Mariana
Hope was a flimsy feeling.
It felt like a spider’s web strung up in my chest, constructed of gossamer thread.
I feared the slightest breeze would tear through it like it was nothing, but as Faren and I traveled north toward Fenrir City—through sunflower fields and fallow meadows, sharing a tent when it rained and snuggling close under clear and starlit skies, talking and laughing and touching within the private glow our campfire—my hope, miraculously, held strong.
I’m on your side, he’d said, and those words…
they were words I’d always longed to hear.
Words of trust, commitment, loyalty—not to a plan or duty or selfish aim, but to me.
Not transactional, but a choice. They had expanded something in my chest. Warmth.
Or air. Or something more tangible. A feeling so expansive and all consuming that it scared me.
Because how could it be true, when Faren had other duties and loyalties to concern himself with?
When he couldn’t put anything—or anyone—above the realm?
And yet, I wanted to believe him.
And yet, I hoped.
So, I paid less attention to the looming threat of my faction trailing us, and the potions I’d have to deliver, and the potential disaster awaiting us at Castle Might.
I focused, instead, on the prettier outcomes we might achieve by the end of all this, bolstered by the knowledge that I was no longer alone in my efforts.
Perhaps I was foolish for entertaining Faren’s plan, but his confidence emboldened me.
My freedom—and a more fortunate future beyond—seemed more possible than ever.
“What is your Fated Fortune?” I asked Faren on a sunny afternoon four days from Fenrir City. “I don’t think you ever told me.”
We were riding side by side on the High Road. Faren had been whistling softly, mimicking bird calls, and the air through his lips trailed off in a falling note.
“What made you think of that?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I was thinking about the future and realized I only knew the sad part of yours,” I replied. “I want to know the happy part.”
Faren gave me a pinched look. “I’m afraid my Fortune isn’t particularly happy, either.”
“No?”
His shook his head, a soft lock of hair falling across his brow. “My vision in the Mirror of Fortune is the same as my Mirror of Death.” A pause. “Fates, Mariana, don’t make that face—it’s gutting.”
I lifted a hand to my mouth, not realizing the horror that’d crept into my expression. His phrasing only made it worse.
“Gutting was an unfortunate choice of words,” Faren added with a wince.
The thought of Faren’s death sent a spear of grief though my chest—one that was painfully familiar. I hated its inevitability. Its irony. “How do you live with such a terrible Fate looming over your head all the time?” I asked, my voice thin.
“As I told you before, I die with purpose,” Faren said. “To know that my actions matter in the end might not be as comforting as a death by old age, but at least I know that there’s some good in it. It’s far preferable to the poor folks who live knowing they’ll die by some meaningless accident.”
The tearing sensation in my chest worsened, my magic latching onto the emotion to bring it to life.
I buried my face in my hands, trying to shut out the terrible thoughts as I breathed through the discomfort.
I didn’t want to lose Faren; I didn’t want to care about him as much as I did; why had I allowed myself to get close to another man destined to die?
At least with Grinnick, I hadn’t seen it coming.
Faren’s saddle creaked. Moments later, I felt him squeeze my knee comfortingly. When I dropped my hands from my face to look at him, his mouth was hitched up in a playful smile.
“What were you hoping I’d say?”
I supposed I’d hoped for some sign that our plan might actually work. Now, I worried that it could be the opposite. It made me want to rein Simon around and send him into a gallop, escaping south.
“Wavy black hair, perhaps?” Faren continued, breaking through my fearful imaginings. “Dark, mysterious eyes. Some pretty hint that my Fortune could be you?”
“I’m not nearly that frivolous or foolish,” I said, but I found a sliver of truth in his teasing. How lovely it would’ve been to have shown up in anyone’s Mirror of Fortune—let alone his.
“Admit it,” Faren said, lifting his chin, the very picture of pomp and charm. “You like me.”
I chuckled. “I do not.”
It’s more than that, said a small voice in the back of my head, but I didn’t want to burden him or our plans with such an admission.
He’d already told me in no uncertain terms that he had no intention of falling in love; that his duty would always come first. And I knew deep within my audacious, selfish heart that if I were to allow myself to care for him as much as I thought I could, I wouldn’t want to come second.
Not even to the realm.
And knowing how his life ended, I didn’t want to explore the burgeoning affection I had for him. I couldn’t. I refused to do that to myself again.
“Liar,” Faren said playfully. “At the very least, you like me between your legs.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You might also like my personality—just a little. In fact, I have reason to believe that you might even enjoy my company.”
I bit the tip of my tongue, trying to suppress my grin. “Do you have any evidence to support such an outlandish claim?”
He gave me a winning smile, all straight teeth and crinkly eyes. “We’ve been traveling together for six weeks,” he said, “and you have yet to stab me even once.”
I tipped my head back, laughter spilling free. He laughed, too, seemingly pleased to have lifted me out of my solemn mood.
“What about you?” Faren asked once I’d quieted. “What’s your happy future? Your Fated Fortune?”
A gust of wind ruffled my hair, and I looked out at the late-autumn landscape and the massive tumble of cumulous clouds above.
Sunlight glanced off Faren’s armor, the metal reflecting our surroundings in shimmering browns, greens, and whites—resplendent.
He was watching me with a look of open curiosity.
The question was innocent enough. For most folks, a vision of Fortune was a simple thing—a loved one, a stroke of luck, at most a little vulnerable.
For me, however, the vision was damning.
No one knew the specific details—not even my parents—and yet I was tempted to tell him.
To give him another part of myself, just to see what he did with it—trusting that whatever his response was, it would be kind.
But I must’ve hesitated too long, because Faren broke eye contact. Giving Sunny a distracted pat on the neck, he said, “It’s alright if you don’t want to tell me.”
“It’s just that—well—my Fortune isn’t in the future,” I began. “It already happened.”
Light brown eyes lifted to mine and held. “What was it?”
“A Ledger.”
“Your Fortune was…” His eyebrows drew together as he formed the realization, and there was something satisfying about watching him put the facts together in his mind.
I knew few people who were that cunning, and even fewer who wielded it for good.
“That’s what you stole from Castle Might,” he said. “That’s why you’re a Valiant Knight.”
“Foolish, isn’t it?”
But he was looking at me not as if I were a fool, but with a tender understanding, as if it all finally made sense. “You did it for your family.”
“I did.”
“On the eve of our mission, my friends told me the rumors about your past,” he explained. “They said that your father took you to the capital. I’m assuming he was there to request something of the Lord, and that the Lord denied him?”
“A break in taxes.”
His grimace was filled with shame. “I’ve watched Lord Haron deny many honest folk. I always thought there was some hidden logic to his decisions, a greater economy worth considering, but I was wrong.” He scratched the back of his neck. “It sickens me to know how complicit I’ve been.”
“You changed your mind,” I said. “You’re taking action now.”
“Doesn’t stop the damage already done. Even before I joined… Fates, how many people have suffered?” His brow furrowed, tone softening. “You were just a little girl.”
I barely remembered what I was like before the Valiant.
My parents often regaled me with stories about my childhood humor, inquisitiveness, and spirited nature.
What I remembered most viscerally, however, was the hunger.
A horrible, yawning, painful, torturous emptiness, made worse by my touch magic.
All those lean winters where my mother had held me close, rocking me in her arms, as if her love could fill my belly.
The year of my eleventh birthday, there was another hike in taxes—lean times getting leaner.
Paired with the loss of our pigs to an unseen predator from the Western Wood, my father had become desperate.
My mother had suggested I travel with him on his journey to the capital, hoping to raise his spirits with my company and my spirits with an adventure.
What they didn’t know was that I’d looked into the Mirrors for the first time a month earlier, hoping for an answer to our poverty.
Children of my age were not permitted to glimpse their Fates, and I’d had to sneak under the cover of darkness.
I hadn’t known what to make of the visions, just that—due to my youth—they were likely to change.
But my Fortune had stuck with me all the way to Castle Might. Hunger had stuck with me, too.
It hadn’t been calculated. It was only after the Lord had denied my father that my vengeance hatched the imbecilic idea.
“You thought your Fortune was literal,” Faren said. “That if you found it, you could ease your family’s impoverishment.”
“It brought me this, instead,” I finished for him, gesturing at my black breastplate. I let out a mirthless chuckle. “What kind of fucked-up Fortune is that?”