11. Chapter Eleven #3
Their laughter—shrill, rasping, lilting—spilled across the clearing like water breaking on stone.
My pulse skittered. Gods taunted mortals, even each other. But this? This felt different. Harrowing.
When the laughter faded, all three turned toward me, as though pulled by the same unseen cord.
The first tilted her face, glass eyes piercing straight through my ribs. “You see.”
The second hissed, finishing the thought. “But you resist touch.”
The third sang, soft as water. “And oh, how it burns.”
Their voices tangled, riddles weaving a net around me.
“The Weave quivers—”
“Fraying, snapping—”
“Yet it binds you tighter.”
I swallowed hard, keeping my face still as the itch of my Sight clawed at me. They spoke like they already knew what I was, what I wasn’t, what I would become. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t know whether to be furious or afraid.
Tairngire stood a half-step behind me, close enough I felt his attention without looking. Predator stillness. No teasing now. He was waiting for something to happen. Something I knew I wasn’t going to like.
The three Fates turned to each other, voices cracking across the water like branches in the wind.
“No,” hissed the first, lip curling. “We do not bind what is already caged.”
The second’s red eye gleamed. “But she is not truly caged. Not yet.”
The third sighed, almost tender. “It must be done. The fate of the realms demands it.”
Their voices overlapped, slicing like jagged thread.
“She is mortal—”
“But not.”
“She sees—”
“But cannot touch.”
“She walks the Seventh Realm only—”
“But must step beyond.”
The first spat into the lake. “Folly. Tie her to him, and she will fade into the ashes his fire leaves in its wake.”
The second leaned forward, hunger in her grin. “Better to fade in the remnants of flame than to unravel like a spool of thread.”
The third’s lilting voice was a whisper in the wind. “She is already unraveling. No mortal walks the realms unbound.”
The realization hit me with the force of a windstorm. My gaze snapped to Tairngire. He wasn’t smiling now. The easy arrogance had slipped, leaving something harder there. For a heartbeat I swore regret flickered in his eyes. Then it was gone—steel in its place.
The air pressed heavier with their verdict. The words coiled like a noose, heat flaring in my chest.
Absolutely not.
“Oh, no. No.” It tore out of me before I could stop it. “You don’t get to tie another leash around my neck. Fate be damned, I won’t allow it.”
The Fates stilled. They stared through me with the eyes of the cosmos: creation, destruction, and the endless dark. Their lips curled into cruel smiles.
“Ahh…” the first hissed, greedy delight dripping from every syllable. “She is fire.”
The second cackled, jagged enough to split bone. “Red. Red. Red. As the bonded thread itself.”
“Dangerous child. Anger burns. Anger blinds,” the third only whispered.
The Weave inside me roared with their words, hot and wild. My fists clenched. My jaw ached. I was so tired—tired of my life being controlled by unseen forces. I wanted to fight.
And then—
Tairngire’s calm voice cut through. “What did I tell you?”
His gaze pinned me, emerald fire catching the faint moonlight. His tone was velvet smooth, almost lazy. His gaze was anything but. “Your anger makes it easier to exploit your weaknesses.”
I glared at him, my every muscle taut, but his expression stayed neutral. He just watched, steady, unyielding, like he’d been waiting for me to break exactly this way.
And the worst part? The Fates were still smiling.
The clearing trembled. I felt it in my teeth, my blood, in the way the Weave inside me thrashed to get closer to them. They closed the gap, bare feet grazing over the moss, mouths speaking jagged in unison, “It is time.”
Tairngire’s eyes stayed on me—expression unreadable, only that cutting focus. “This might hurt,” he said again, voice quiet, absolute.
“I don’t want it.” The words tore out, acid hot.
“Want has nothing to do with it,” crooned the first.
“Need,” the second hissed.
“Necessity,” the third finished.
They lifted their hands. From the dark water behind them, a single strand shimmered into being--red as blood, pulsing faintly, alive.
The moment it appeared, my knees buckled. Fire ripped through my chest, into my arms, into my bones. My Sight screamed. I saw its thread before it touched me—already seeking, already claiming.
The red thread, the soul bond—meant that I would be inextricably bound to Tairngire.
I would not perish as long as this thread connected us.
It was a promise of immortality…immortality I didn’t want.
This bond would chain me in service forever.
To him. To the Sight. Never aging. No peace of the afterlife would be granted, unless I died by blade.
That was the soul bond. The cruelest of them all.
“No.” My voice stayed even. “I am not his.”
The Fates only smiled wider.
Tairngire stepped closer, his shadow swallowing mine. “You are not mine,” he said, low enough only I could hear. “But you cannot walk the realms without this bond. Your mortal blood would disintegrate before reaching the gates.”
Godsdamn him. How convenient. I would be chained to misery forever, while he dragged me around on a leash, to teach me whatever lessons the Godhood required. For eternity.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and heard the Shamans voice in my head. When something is out of your control, think of a worse outcome. Whether you believe it or not, there will always be one, Little Mirror.
There was clearly no way out of this. When the Fates decided on something, it was done—even if you had to be forced.
I thought of all the mortal souls who had suffered countless deaths and rebirths in Morhaven, fates far worse than what I’d lived through.
I wouldn’t wish this burden on any mortal.
As selfish as I had been in the Elder’s hut that night after taking a beast with a blade, I would have no peace in the afterlife with that knowledge hanging over my head. I’d have to accept this.
The Fates hissed, eager, circling.
“Join,” one crooned
“Bind,” another sang.
“Forever,” the last whispered.
The thread stretched between us now, humming, waiting. It quivered like a beast on a leash, begging to bite.
Anger boiled in me, but beneath it, something else. A quiet and reluctant acceptance of what I couldn’t control. A mantra I’d have to consistently repeat for the rest of my endless life.
The Fates leaned closer, their smiles churned my gut.
“It will hurt,” one breathed.
“But it will hold,” another added.
“And once it is done,” the last promised, “you will never walk alone again.”
The third Fate looked at me as if those words should be comforting, lighter—but they only felt heavier.
The red thread shimmered inches from my hand.
And I knew if I touched it, everything would change. But I had no choice.
It lunged the instant my fingers brushed it, piercing my palm. Fire roared up my arm, spilling through my chest and searing every nerve. My knees threatened to give out, but I locked them, refusing to bow—refusing to let Tairngire, or the Fates, see me fall.
The thread was inside me, writhing, burning marrow and vein. My Sight fractured with it, the library of strands blazing too bright, too fast. Voices filled my head. Lives not my own. Faces I’d never seen. Every one tugging, trying to tear me apart.
The Fates sang with it, their voices discordant and hungry.
“Bind.”
“Seal.
“Forever.”
The cord snapped taut between us, blinding white before bleeding back to red. It anchored deep in my chest. I gasped—half-pain, half-defiance, but did not fall.
When the burning ebbed, something heavier remained. A hum in my bones, not mine. His.
I dragged my gaze to Tairngire, fury lashing like a whip. He stood steady as stone, though his jaw clenched, as if he’d borne the sting too. For the first time, his eyes softened—the look on his face was far more unsettling than any amusement.
“You handle pain well, Little Seer,” he said, voice laced with something dangerously close to approval.
I hated that it sounded like praise. Fuck him.
The Fates dissolved back into the water. Their laughter echoed long after. The clearing fell silent but for the rasp of my breath.
The bond between us burned steady, wrapping around both of us and vibrating in a way I didn’t want to think about.
I could feel him, his every heartbeat trying to sync with mine, as if his very essence were becoming an extension of me.
The silence pressed tighter, broken only by the lake’s rush and the low hum of the Weave around me.
Travel the realms.
The words echoed in my skull, clearer now that the pain was fading. My stomach sank. I turned and really looked at him—the god who had just doomed me to eternal damnation by his side.
“Travel the realms?” My voice came low, unsteady only in the way it hit. “What. Does that mean?”
He didn’t answer, just adjusted the fall of his bracers, as if my world hadn’t just been split open.
I stepped closer, anger rising in an unstoppable tide.
“Am I supposed to follow you, then? Pass between realms like some tethered hound? Because that’s what they implied.
And why in the gods’ names would I? My duty is here.
Always has been. The rites, the bonds—they’re woven here.
” I was going to snap. “Stop ignoring me!”
His gaze slid lazily back to mine, entirely unconcerned by my rising temper. “Your duty is no longer only confined to the Seventh Realm.”
“That’s not an answer.” I said through gritted teeth.
He smiled faintly, though coldness remained in his eyes. “It’s the only one you’ll get.” He pinned me with a deadpan look. “Please tell me you have at least a modicum of intelligence after a lifetime of reading all those precious, sacred texts? Think, Little Seer. It’s quite cut and dry, really.”