Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
A DAUGHTER OF ATROPOS
Amira
We reached a quaint little cabin on the edge of a clearing early the next morning. With the mist still hovering over the frost-encrusted grass and trees, and the warm glow of a candle in the window, it was wonderfully picturesque.
“She only allows two inside at once,” Orion warned once he had shifted. “Evidently too many energies in one room can interfere with her visions,” he explained.
I turned to look at Sofia, whom I was hesitant to leave since she had refused to speak a word to any of the others. But she pushed me toward Orion.
“It is alright,” she insisted with a smile that did not reach her golden eyes. “You two should go.”
I frowned as I turned from her and narrowed my eyes up at Ares whose tail whipped at the challenge.
“Not a word. Not one,” I ordered him.
“But—”
“Not. One,” I hissed at him, shoving my finger into his armoured breastplate. “Not until I get back.”
He cast a glance at Sofia, who did not meet his eyes, and gave a sigh of resignation.
“Fine,” he huffed.
I followed Orion across the clearing, passing through a garden of herbs and onto the porch where there was one rocking chair. I knocked while the wooden wind chimes created a harmony behind me.
“I hope she doesn’t mind that we are here without any kind of notice. I know that she… called me, but we never sent word ahead that we were coming,” I worried aloud, and then glanced up at Orion in a near panic.
“She is a Seer, Amira. She is probably expecting us, and if she did not want visitors, then I suspect she would not have left the candle in her window,” he assured me.
I was not sure if that was how it worked, but the door opened before I could contemplate that any further.
Hypatia was not what I had expected, although I was not entirely sure what I was expecting in the first place.
Perhaps a quirky woman or one who was extraordinarily ancient and mysterious.
But whatever I was anticipating had not been this tall and elegant creature with her regal bearing and long dark braid streaked with grey.
But she was old. I could feel it even if the greying in her wings had not given it away.
“Amira Kelley. I have looked forward to meeting you since you were born under that bridge. Please come in,” she invited with a deep voice and opened the door wider for us to enter the cottage.
You were born under a bridge? Orion gawked through our bond as we stepped over the threshold.
“You might as well speak aloud. The buzzing of your bond is aggravating,” the enuksha spoke up as she closed the door.
She ignored Orion when he stiffened and walked around us to guide us deeper into the cabin that smelled of fresh bread and lavender.
There were bundles of herbs hanging in the kitchen and mismatching furniture around the hearth where a cauldron of stew was bubbling.
“You can hear the bond?” I asked.
“I do not hear the words that you speak, but I sense the bond humming whenever you communicate through it,” she explained.
She waved to the couch where she wanted us to sit and took her place in the chair across the small room from us.
“I can hear nearly all forms of magic when they are in my presence. I am a daughter of Atropos.”
Atropos was the Inevitable Fate, a Greek goddess who was supposedly the one who decided when to cut each of our threads to end our lives. I shivered at the thought.
“Thank you for speaking with us,” I said humbly and inclined my head. “Why did you call me here?”
“You have questions. And some are very important,” she acknowledged with an amused tilt of her head.
Enough with the niceties, apparently.
“Be specific,” Orion warned in a quiet aside that made Hypatia’s mouth quirk at him.
“You have not forgotten the last time you were here,” she observed, her gaze flicking between us.
Orion did not seem to wish to go into it, and I needed to stay focused.
Riordan had told me this woman could tempt me into an endless cycle of questions.
Thankfully, I had been honing my wording between my conversations with Orion.
“I need to know who is trying to use Riordan’s magic against him,” I began as confidently as I could.
“It is not one but many,” she answered right away.
“Alright, then who is their leader?” I asked.
“They are an entity of many threads, but I can hear the song of divine retribution within their blood,” she said.
I glanced at Orion who raised his brows as if to remind me that he and Riordan had tried to warn me about this.
“You cannot give me a name?” I pressed.
“We are not our name. The fates know us by the song of our essence when our threads are strummed,” she said, just as Riordan had predicted she would.
“But you knew my name,” I pointed out, recalling the moment she had opened the door.
“Yes. Your name and Riordan’s both are on his heart,” she explained and gestured at Orion. She smirked at me as if she knew that I was trying to trip her up.
I glanced at Orion, but he did not seem ashamed as he reached over to thread our fingers together on his thigh. That little smile on his lips even seemed pleased.
“Alright. Then can you tell me a little more about what makes this person—thread—unique?” I asked Hypatia.
She tilted her head as if she were listening to the song she had mentioned, which I could not hear.
“It is… unnatural. Threads layered over one another so that none of them can be cut,” she explained.
The Wild Hunt? I blurted to Orion down our bond. Ornella said they were interconnected.
Hypatia wrinkled her nose at me in reminder that she did not like the sensation of us using our bond.
“Does the interference come from Autumn Court?” Orion asked her calmly.
“Many threads are entwined between our realm and that of Living Death,” she acknowledged.
I sighed in frustration and took a moment to remind myself that I had known this might be the way of it. I just wasn’t sure how to get meaningful answers when she did not know people or places by their given names.
Hypatia seemed to take pity on me and leaned forward to take my free hand off my knee.
“The friend whose forgiveness your heart most yearns for is very nigh now. Your fates are entangled,” she told me with a trace of apparent sadness.
Sofia? That was unsurprising. But perhaps I had been going about this all wrong. Maybe it was best to just let Hypatia guide me to my answers rather than attempt to steer her to what I thought I needed to know.
“Tell me more,” I invited her, and Hypatia smiled as if she appreciated my decision to let her speak freely.
“The one whose tune you know not whether to trust is a true song. That of the one you never questioned is not.”
Castor and… someone else? Someone I never thought to question was actually untrustworthy. I had to bite down the follow-up questions that sprung to mind immediately and nodded for her to go on.
“Your enemies are closing in, and your path diverges suddenly in the most painful of ways. But you must lose love to gain the forgiveness that will save your world.”
Oh. Oh, I did not like that. And neither did Orion who gave my hand a comforting squeeze.
“Fire can be easily smothered when its air is choked. That kind of power is in the blood. The stars will answer if you beckon to them with the one whose thread is split in two. Betrayal is the path to right your wrongs, but mind the darkness does not swallow the stars.”
“I take it she was about as unhelpful to you as she was to Riordan when he came,” Helena guessed the moment she saw my face once we returned to the clearing.
“You would be right,” I sighed. “Riordan said that she would be cryptic, but I had no idea how bad it would be.”
And even though what she had said made little sense, it still left me unsettled.
Fire can be easily smothered when its air is choked.
Betrayal is the path to right your wrongs.
You must lose love to gain the forgiveness that will save your world.
But mind the darkness does not swallow the stars.
“There is a stream just through the trees that is warm when it comes out of the earth. We should go there and you can freshen up before we start heading back home,” Orion suggested gently, his hand on my lower back.
I nodded in agreement and allowed him to walk me under the cold shadow of the forest while my mind tried to make sense of what I’d been told.
“There is no point in trying to find logic in any of it. Most of what she told Riordan only came to him in the moment when her predictions were finally coming true,” Orion murmured to me soothingly.
He brought me to a place where water was streaming out of a jagged cliff, and the water was as warm as he promised when I reached for it. I groaned in appreciation and scooped some into my palms to splash on my face.
The others sat down some distance away while I took a moment to recompose myself. Once it felt like I could breathe again, Orion took my chin and tipped my head up to give me a tender kiss.
“Thank you. I needed that,” I whispered.
“I will always take care of your—”
He broke off, tail suddenly whipping as he cocked his head toward the trees at the same time that Helena and Ares both sat up. They all shared a glance I recognized.
Fuath. We need to go now, Orion warned me through our bond as he took my hand to tug me away from the cliff with the streaming water.
“But… Hypatia—”
“She is more powerful than any of us. Only those she wants in her cottage may gain entrance,” he assured me. “We need to get out from under these trees and shift.”
I nodded and ran with him to join the others. We were about to head back toward the clearing, but the sound of the hyena-like cries of the Fuath suddenly reached us.
“Fuck! We are surrounded,” Orion hissed in disbelief. “How did they get so close without us knowing?”
“It’s alright. I can blast through them and provide us some cover to get to the clearing,” I said confidently.