Lucy
“Well, isn’t this quite the predicament?” Interitus says. The pair of them circle me as if I’m prey.
All the while, I’m quietly bending campus magic between my fingers. I need them as close as I can get them.
“Ordinarily, I’d be overcome with joy at the prospect of two women fighting over me. Angels, no less,” I say.
Interitus sneers, but I can tell the old Thalia is in there when her eyes crinkle with laughter and then she lunges for me.
I dart out of the way as Architecti smashes into her sister. But Interitus is quick. One of her feathers releases from her wing and fires straight at me. I dive sideways, but it nicks my thigh.
I wail as I crash to the ground, warm liquid running down my leg. I roll over and push myself up, as the sisters throw blow after blow at each other.
Interitus breaks off and comes after me, and I throw a punch which collides with her jaw. Architecti’s wings slice through the air, knocking my legs out from under me as her moth zooms for Interitus’s head.
Architecti realises she’s toppled me over and reaches for me, offering a helping hand. But I hesitate.
Her expression goes dark. “So you know,” she snarls.
Shit. I was hoping to keep the fact I knew she was going to betray me secret a little longer.
This is not how it was supposed to go. I need to get control, but my body is already throbbing and bruised.
Architecti is yanked back by her wings, and the two angels batter the shit out of each other while they scramble to reach me.
Architecti lunges ahead, her hand clenching my throat and squeezing as she hauls me up. Her fingers are so tight against my throat it stops my air. I panic and kick my legs, but she opens her mouth, and my skin flares to life.
The light and power are flowing from my body to hers.
She spins us, aiming me at her sister. A burst of power pours from my chest and my insides feel like they’re going to rip apart.
It hurts. Fuck, it hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
As if my entire being is being pulled out of me.
It’s hot and searing, with the intense sting of electric shocks all over my skin.
She reaches deep into my bones and all the way to that space where my heart was and she draws everything out of me.
Her moth flutters around my head, zipping this way and that in excitement.
Interitus screeches in agony, buckling over as her wings begin to disintegrate. But she claws her way up and flings herself at Architecti, crashing into the pair of us.
I’m flung backwards and they hit the ground. I flip onto my knees, gasping for oxygen, my lungs burning and my throat aching. She’s weakened me. But there’s no time to recover.
Both angels are already back on their feet. Architecti kicks Interitus in the chest, and she flies through the air, slamming into one of the turrets. It rumbles and creaks and several slate tiles slip and fall to the earth below.
The pair of them smash into each other and keep going this time. They careen into me, and I’m knocked over, my head crunching against a stone sculpture. Everything goes static and grey, and my scalp is wet.
I wipe my hair and it comes away deep red.
That is not good.
This has to end.
I stand but I’m woozy now.
Interitus dives for Architecti and I see the opportunity. Hauling myself up, I twist out of the way and hurl power at them.
Interitus shrieks as white light and ribbons land on her first and bury themselves in her skin. It spreads like a virus to her sister.
And then they’re both on the ground, hissing and screeching and swearing at me.
They are pressed together, chest to chest, arms pinned to their sides, their bodies wrapped in layers and layers of white ribbon mesh.
Architecti’s moth slams into the ribbons and threads over and over, until her little wings sizzle and smoke.
“THIS STOPS NOW,” I boom.
“Pathetic,” Architecti says. “Your only purpose here is to serve me.”
I kneel beside them both. “You may have taught me how to use my power in order to wield it to kill Interitus, but you forget, I have a piece of each of you inside me. I know exactly what your plans are.”
That makes her fall silent.
“Interitus wants to end fate. And you want to end her.”
“And you? What do you want?” Interitus says.
I stand, ready to end this. “To be free. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Killing us isn’t going to make you free. You’ll never be free of what you are,” Architecti says.
Interitus huffs out a laugh. “I never agree with my sister, but on this she is right. You cannot hide from who you are, only accept it.”
I close my eyes and let my mind sink into the power. I unravel, letting all my remaining strength filter into the runes. Deeper and deeper I sink. Power surges in waves through my body, light billows around us, stretching into the night sky and through the ribbon-like mesh imprisoning them.
I place my hands on their trapped bodies. Their lives flash past me in snatches and visions and finally there’s a loosening. The first pieces of them to unravel are the slices of soul buried in me.
A sting rips through my gut.
Heat floods my body.
My eyes snap open.
They’re fighting back.
Of course they’re fighting back. As if I was naive enough to think I could just undo not one but two angels.
The heat rockets up to scorching temperatures. Sweat pours down my temples. My nose bursts and my mouth fills with blood.
I can’t hold on, it’s too much. I fling what I have at the angels and pray it works. But nothing happens. I fizzle out and drop to my hands and knees, panting, and throw up.
Oh gods, this should have worked. I should have been able to use my power to undo what they are. I’m meant to be all powerful. Why isn’t it working? Why am I not strong enough?
The angels wriggle and fight against the bindings. The first thread splits and frays, and my blood runs cold.
Interitus stills and then laughs.
“What’s so funny, sister?” Architecti says.
“Do you see now? That I have no fate. Even the source of power can’t undo me.”
“Then you should let me kill you and be done with your wretched life.”
Interitus head-butts Architecti, but they’re bound so tightly that Architecti’s head ricochets and they both end up groaning and with bloodied faces.
The image of the sisters stood before the Mirror of Fate flashes through my mind. I have seen the memory she’s talking about.
But Interitus’s words ring through my mind. Do you see now? I have no fate.
Her mirror was dark. Empty. She thought she was forgotten. But that is not it at all.
She missed the point entirely.
The angels snap their heads to me. It appears I am laughing. Laughing so hard that I have tears running through the blood and dirt on my face.
“What is amusing you?” Interitus says.
“You, actually.”
She frowns at me. This time, I try a kind approach. I help them stand.
“What is it you desire?” I ask Interitus.
“The end of fate. Of a system of control and oppression.” She says it adamantly and without pause.
“What would you do to achieve it?” I ask again.
“Anything.”
“Would you die for it?”
She nods.
I move to Architecti. “And you… what do you desire?”
“For my sister to pay for the pain she has caused.”
“And what would you do to achieve that?”
“Anything,” she says.
“Would you die for it?” I ask.
“Yes,” she whispers. “There is nothing left for me. She took everything I had.”
I wipe my hand over Interitus’s face, mopping the blood up. “Oh, Thalia, you thought the fates forgot you, but they gave you the greatest gift of all…”
Her frown deepens so I continue.
“You did not see nothing. What you saw was no fate.”
She grits her teeth at me. “Yes, exact—” She falters, her eyes widening, then she gasps, sudden, cracking. Her world view shifting. Architecti follows a moment later.
“Undifferentiated potential? It’s not… That’s not possible.” Interitus is babbling, but she’s processing, the cogs aligning.
“You are what you’ve been trying to create, you are all fates at once. The fates didn’t forget you, they couldn’t show you your destiny because you are greater than the system. You are what comes next,” I say.
She stares at me, her mouth parting.
“But in isolation and without Architecti’s power for possibility, you become the embodiment of entropy. All you are capable of is destruction and not the creation of your potential, a new system.
I turn to Architecti. “And you. Those tears you cried, not in sorrow, but through the weight of burden, of carrying so much free will. Too much possibility without direction and you chose your own destruction. Do you see? You need each other. Together you can create something new. But not as you are, and not alone.”
“Big words and bigger ideas from a thing. A contract,” Architecti snaps, her mask of pleasantry long gone.
I shake my head. She’s just trying to hurt me. “I know what I am. What I was created for. That doesn’t mean it’s all I can be.”
Architecti screams. She lunges forward, smashing into me and sending me tumbling backwards.
I stagger and land on the parapet, my body half hanging off the ledge.
I glance over the lip. The campus is crawling with vampires and wraiths.
There are an impossible number of lifeless bodies on the ground. “Oh gods.”
I have to end this now.
Movement catches the corner of my eye. I twist and see a body hanging by campus threads off the parapet several feet away. I squint and realise… “Midnight, get to safety,” I hiss.
She lifts her head. Moans. Then kicks and scrambles up, gripping her ribs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shake my head at her. But she glares back and shakes hers harder.
“Get to safety,” I growl.
“Not. Leaving. You,” she spits out.
Fucking woman.
I have to handle this before she gets here. I do not need the angels having leverage over me.
The sisters grapple, still locked in the rapidly deteriorating mesh. Interitus gets an arm free and grips Architecti’s neck.
Architecti stamps her foot on Interitus’s and the pair go stumbling, only to crash into the same sculpture I fell on earlier.