I didn’t know exactly what those titles meant, but based on the slack-jawed surprise etched all over Silas’s normally stoic features, the Fate had offered him something big.
“How is that possible?” he asked.
The Fate shrugged in an expression more cunning than a child her age should have made. She creeped me out. I wanted to tell Silas not to trust any promises she made.
“Prophecy will be interpreted and... reinterpreted,” she said. “What is lost can be restored.”
The air between us blurred and shifted into a shimmering, opaque pool of energy. A rectangular doorway appeared. It was twice as high as a normal door and domed at the top, wide enough for two people to fit side by side. The surface wavered as if rippled by a slight breeze.
The Fate held out her hand in an invitation to walk through. “Your new fate awaits.”
Silas tensed.
Panic flared inside of me at the thought of him leaving me with the creepy Fate and an unknown future.
His eyes narrowed. “No. I won’t break my oath to Maeve. And I won’t be a puppet to a Fate.”
The Fate gave him a small, secretive grin. If it was a test, I couldn’t tell if Silas had passed or failed. My heart ached for him even as relief flooded me. I didn’t know the extent of what he’d just given up, but the Fate had called it his heart’s desire. Making him choose between that and his oath to me was cruel.
“Can you reverse the Transference?” I asked, drawing the Fate’s attention away from Silas.
“What has passed is here now and will come again.”
Okay, Yoda. “Can you remove the magic inside of me?” My throat grew tight. I’d risked everything to find the Fate, and her answer would determine my future.
“You will only lose your powers to death.”
“What?” My heart skipped a beat as I digested her words. I’d suspected I would have to bargain or maybe endure some ritual, but I hadn’t really considered the possibility that it wasn’t possible for the magic to be removed.
“You must restore the balance of power,” she continued.
“What does that even mean?” Removing the magic would kill me. I’ll never be normal again.
“A life exchanged for yours, Maeve O’Neill of Earth. Your moments are filled with death.”
My heart lurched and restarted, thudding hard in my ears. A terrible sinking feeling settled in my gut. Marcel. He had died to transfer his power to me. A life exchanged for mine.
A thunderous explosion rocked the room. I stumbled forward and caught myself on the chair. The room rocked violently again, and inhuman shrieks pierced the air.
“The Rakken!” I yelled.
“We’re trapped up here,” Silas said, moving back toward the closed trapdoor in the floor.
The Fate sat motionless, her eyes glowing with power. She didn’t react as another boom shifted the floor under our feet. The shrieking grew louder like claws scraping on a chalkboard. I clapped my hands over my ears to keep my brain from melting. With a flare of magic, Silas’s sword appeared in his hand, and he strode toward the opening.
The trapdoor slammed open with such force, it tore off its hinges. A Rakken clawed its way up through the hole just before Silas reached it, leaving enormous gashes in the stone floor.
The second one through received a vicious kick in the head from Silas’s boot and went crashing down onto the others below, blocking their path momentarily.
Silas grinned and swirled the sword, twisting his body and loosening his muscles as he faced the Rakken that made it through. With a stunning burst of speed, the beast leapt, and Silas slashed at its forelimbs before pivoting out of the path of its razor-sharp claws. The thick gray skin of the hairless beast seemed as strong as armor, and the shallow wound didn’t slow it down. It made another lunge at Silas, who twisted and sliced again, keeping himself between the Rakken and where I stood by the Fate. This time, thick crimson blood welled on the Rakken’s chest, reminding me that this was a person with greater than animal intelligence.
As they fought and parried, that intelligent monster kept Silas away from the trapdoor long enough for five more of its companions to jump through. Titus came through the hole with three more Rakken at his heels. All nine Rakken, and the man who controlled them, blocked any chance of escape in the previously expansive space.
Titus didn’t pause to say hello before he threw a sharp wave of red-black magic straight at us.
Silas and I dove in opposite directions. I hit the ground and rolled. The magic slammed into the floor, shattering the stone. Shards sprayed around me, and I flung my arms over my face.
A Rakken lunged with its jaws unhinged. I rolled again, and its double row of jagged teeth gnashed inches from my leg. It pivoted and dove toward me, digging its claws into the marble floor. I scrambled to my feet, and it sprang again, claws extended. I dropped flat on my back and thrust Ripper upward with all my strength. Ripper’s short blade pierced into the Rakken’s throat only a few inches deep, not far enough to do considerable damage. The beast landed on me, its giant paws crushing me into the floor. Claws dug into the tops of my shoulders, and I screamed.
I gripped the knife with two hands and dug through the tough flesh of its neck. It shrieked and dug its claws in deeper. Finally, Ripper broke through the thick hide, and warm blood gushed over my arm. I pushed the blade deeper and twisted it. Seconds later, the enormous beast collapsed on top of my lower body. The smell of its rotten breath made me gag. I pushed frantically against its heavy weight. Crushed under its oversized body, I heaved with everything I had but couldn’t get loose.
Across the room, Silas had turned six of the remaining Rakken into headless heaps of corded, hairless flesh, their necks cauterized as if sliced through by a lightsaber. The bodies started to waver as the last of their magic left them, and I deliberately looked away.
Silas stepped over the beheaded Rakken and ran toward me, his attention locked on my struggle to free myself from the Rakken’s dead weight before another one ate me. With his help, I finally managed to push the dead carcass off my legs and wiggle free.
Flanked by the last two Rakken, Titus cast a sizzling orb of dark magic at Silas’s back from across the room.
Too late to yell out a warning and propelled by instinct, I lunged forward and caught it like a baseball. Surprised, I held it between my hands. The power was amazing, like a tornado trapped inside a glass ball. The strands of magic twisted as I rolled it between my fingers, examining the layers inside. The desire to absorb it itched desperately inside me, but I remembered the way the tainted magic had made me sick and forced myself to resist. With a deep, primal hatred, my gaze lifted to Titus’s snarling face. He would pay for all the pain and death he’d inflicted.
I dashed forward and hurled the magic back at him.
He dove out of the way, and the energy slammed into the Rakken beside him. The unintended target released an animalistic wail as it flew backward and crashed into the far wall.
In an explosion of speed, the last Rakken lunged across the room, its giant jaws snapping. I skittered backward, out of its reach.
“Take her alive!” Titus yelled.
The air shifted. The Rakken growled and swiped massive paws at me, pushing me backward and farther away from Silas, who was still dodging attacks from Titus’s magic.
A pair of arms wrapped around me from behind, pinning my hands to my sides and pressing my back against his chest. I slammed my head backward and missed the unknown man’s face by about six inches. Twisting in his arms, I angled the knife still gripped in my hand and tried to stab his thigh.
The Rakken in front of me shifted into the shape of a man and tore Ripper from my hand. He pressed the sharp blade against my throat, and I froze. I was trapped between the two men. They snarled in my face, looking ready to eat me despite the lack of sharp Rakken teeth.
“Silas!” Titus bellowed his name like a curse.
My captors held me tight. The blade dug into my neck
. I couldn’t even talk without getting sliced. Suddenly, it all seemed too real, too dangerous. I had no business being in this fight armed only with my tiny field knife and my anger. Silas had said they needed me alive, but the Fate’s proclamation had changed everything. The Brotherhood would have to kill me to get the magic out of me, and I had no guarantees that they wouldn’t do it right then.
Silas tensed and raised the tip of his sword at Titus.
Oh shit, he was going to fight. There was no way he could get across the room and take out my attackers before they sliced my throat. My entire body tensed.
Titus opened his mouth and... froze. His mouth hung open, silent and completely unmoving. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t even breathing.
The temple radiated with raw power, burning with the combined light of a hundred suns. Pure white light surrounded me. Each of our attackers stalled in mid-movement, their weapons raised, and dark magic surrounding them.
Silas gave me the same bewildered look that must have been plastered on my face. He slowly lowered his sword. The Fate was still nowhere to be seen, but that much magic power could only have come from her.
“That’s... super creepy,” I said slowly.
“Can you get free?” he whispered.
It took me a second to realize I needed to move. With a wary glance at the frozen man holding the knife to my throat, I very carefully worked Ripper loose from his grip. I didn’t want to move too quickly and somehow break the spell, but at the same time, I didn’t know how long they would remain frozen. My heart pounded in my throat as I twisted against the arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders and waist, but there was no give in his grip.
The childlike Fate appeared in front of me, startling me so violently that I jerked in the man’s grasp. If the knife had still been there, I would have slit my own throat.
“Death’s Fate is set this hour,” the Fate stated.
My stomach twisted, and suddenly, I stood on the far side of the room, behind the Fate’s throne. Silas stood beside me with a matching look of surprise. Behind us, a new doorway of energy rippled.
Everyone unfroze at the same moment.
The Fate stood in the middle of the tangled mass of violence with Titus, his men, and the mutilated bodies of Rakken that had shifted back to human.
The surviving men lurched, momentarily confused as they realized we had disappeared from their grasps. Titus’s head whipped toward us just as Silas dragged me backward toward the Fate’s doorway. My stomach pulled in all directions as we entered the outer edges of its magic reach.
Titus bellowed and shoved his sword through the Fate’s stomach.
She stared at me as blood gushed from her abdomen, and Earth fell away.
Chapter Eleven
My lungs burned, and my stomach sloshed violently. I bent over my knees and stared between my feet, trying to catch my breath. Traveling through the Fate’s doorway felt like being squeezed through a ketchup bottle.
I gripped Ripper with white knuckles coated in blood. “Is she dead?”
Silas’s brow crinkled. “The Fate?”
“Titus stabbed her,” I said with more calm than I felt. I took a deep breath and willed my stomach to settle as I took in our surroundings. The round room was completely devoid of furnishings. The gray stone walls and floor reminded me of a stark prison cell but with better lighting. The room had no doors and no windows. The only things of interest in the room were the stone pillars we’d traveled through when we entered the Fate’s doorway.
“No.” He shrugged. “The Fates manifest in different temporal forms. It isn’t permanent.”
Relief washed over me. The Fate was creepy as hell, but she had tried to help us. Not to mention, I just didn’t need any more deaths on my hands. “What did she say about ‘Death’s Fate’?”
Silas’s face twisted into a grimace. “Fates and their blasted piece of shite prophecies.”
“Prophecy?” I tried to straighten and managed to almost fall on my face. A new pain flashed up my calf.
“Are you hurt?” Silas crouched next to me, blood staining his shirt. Insistent fingers loosened my grip on Ripper. I let him take it, and the knife disappeared in a flare of his magic.
I rolled up my pant leg, inspecting a long, shallow cut on my calf. “It’s just a scratch.” It stung like crazy, but it wasn’t an emergency. “Where are we?”
He took a deep breath that seemed to fill his entire body. The golden energy in his aura became a slightly brighter shade. “Aeterna. Portals from every realm come through this facility. New arrivals are detained here until approved for entry.”
Every nerve in my body sparked with fear. I was in Aeterna, the Council’s realm.
“You’re hyperventilating,” Silas said. “Calm yourself. The Brotherhood can’t attack you here.”
“I have to get out of here!” I spun toward the Fate’s doorway just behind us. The pale glow of magic began to fade from within the two pillars. “No!” I lunged for it, but I was too late.
I stumbled through the structure to the other side of the room. The gate was closed. I scanned the structure, desperate for an escape path. The runes on the columns, which had radiated a soft white glow of magic when we came through, faded to nothing.
I searched the room, but there was no escape.
“Turn it back on,” I demanded.
“I can’t do that,” Silas responded.
“Take me back,” I commanded. “The Council—Shit! I can’t be here.” Terror welled up and wrapped its claws around my throat. I’d lived through Titus’s attacks, the Rakken, and even hypothermia, but it was all for nothing. The Fate had told me the only way to get the power out of me was to kill me. I stood in a realm ruled by even more powerful people who would kill for the power stuck inside me, and I was never going to return to my old life. Father Mike had told me to do everything I could not to go to Aeterna, yet I’d come like a lamb to the slaughter. It was too damn much. The fear burned so strong, Marcel’s memories started to surface again.
I spun around, searching for some way to get out of this impossible situation. “I have to—Where’s my knife? I need Ripper!”
Silas grasped my shoulders and forced me to stop. “Maeve! Be calm.”
“They’re going to kill me!”
“You’re safe. I swore to protect you, and I always keep my word.”
“Then get me a goddamned way out of here!”
White magic flared around me, and I gasped at the sudden pressure of the magic escaping me. The memories were taking over. “Not again!”
Silas pulled me against his chest, and his mouth pressed down on mine. It was a desperate, aggressive kiss. Held too tight in his arms, my panic flared brighter for a split second. Then the pressure behind his lips softened, and his arms wrapped around my back. I relaxed into his hold, and we were really kissing.
A new kind of tension built between us. I leaned into him and hooked my arms around his shoulders. Heat blazed through my body. For one perfect moment, all the fear and uncertainty faded to the background.
“Uh, thanks,” I mumbled as I pulled back. His distraction had worked. A small bubble of calm blossomed inside my panic, and the frantic magical energy came back under control. With Silas’s help, maybe it was possible for me to make it out alive. The calm grew into hope as I scanned his confident face. I had no choice but to face the Council, but I wasn’t alone.
His face went suddenly hard. “Fratch. I can’t do this.”
My brain was fuzzy. “What?”
“Sex is one thing.” He waved his hand between us. “And I will do everything I can with the Council, but I can’t give you more. I’m not... I can’t give you anything more.”
My heart flipped over. “I don’t understand. I’m not asking you for anything. I—”
A door slid open in the wall to our left, and a crisply uniformed man entered and bowed toward Silas with his fist over his heart. He spoke, but the words were completely foreign to me.
Silas responded.
“What are you saying?” I whispered.
Silas held up his hand, and the man stopped talking. “You can’t understand him?”
I shook my head, totally confused.
Silas said something, and the man responded. Silas’s lips pursed. “That is... interesting.”
“What’s going on?”
Silas’s power flared, and the man flinched almost imperceptibly, his eyes on Silas’s flare.
“Aeternals get a translation sigil at birth. Without it, you won’t be able to understand anyone here, nor will they understand your native tongue.”
I held out my arm. “Give me the sigil then.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “I’ve been told it’s rude to brand someone like an animal.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “You have my permission this time.”
His warm hand cupped the side of my neck, and I tensed. The cool rush of his magic flowed through me followed by the quick sting of the spell. It wasn’t nearly as bad as receiving the Aegis sigil that bonded us together. This seemed lighter, less powerful than the mark he’d given me back in Boston.
“Say something, Centurion,” Silas said.
“My lord?” the man responded, looking between us in utter confusion.
Silas raised an eyebrow, and I nodded.
“Good. Continue, Centurion.”
The man’s eyes shifted between Silas’s bloody shirt and my grime-covered clothes before he spoke again. He swallowed. “The Council requests that you and your guest present yourselves immediately, my lord.”
My heart clenched. The Council already knew about me.
“My guest is injured. I’m taking her to House Valeron.”
The man thumped his fist to his chest and bowed out of the doorway. Silas strode past him with me in tow and led us to an outer atrium made of the same thick, drab stone. The room was circular, with six identical doors spaced evenly along the walls. In the exact center of the room stood a large stone platform. As we approached, it lit with clear energy. I paused in front of it, unsure.
Fate Forged Page 11
