Fate

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  My best calculations said that “later” corresponded with the establishment of the Nexus, the Fates, and a new connection between the two worlds.

  “How did things change?” I asked, feeling on some level like I should know the answer, but unable to access it.

  “Crossing over became rarer,” James replied. “It became possible only at certain times, certain places.”

  The fuzziness in my head kept me from figuring out why that sounded familiar. The inside of my skull itched, and I found myself wondering how to make it stop and whether or not my powers in this realm extended to reaching inside my own brain to scratch.

  There was something I was forgetting.

  The thought was fleeting, sucked out of my head by the air around me and the gentle movement of the other dancers through this magical space. With deliberate effort, I finally remembered that I'd been asking him about powers and, despite feeling a little light-headed, I continued on that path.

  “What can you do?” I asked.

  “Me personally, or the Sidhe in general?”

  “Either,” I said.

  James took my hand and spun me. “I can do this.”

  I laughed. “That's not a real answer.” I waited for him to tell me what his powers really were, but no answer came.

  “Tell me about someone else then,” I said. “Like … what about Lyria? She's Aphrodite, right? But what does that mean? The Greeks thought she was the goddess of love. She's the heir to the Seelie throne. So what can she do?”

  “Lyria is highly empathic,” James said carefully. “She has the ability to feel others' emotions as her own.”

  “That's it?” I was skeptical. Eze was powerful. I could feel that much, and I doubted that her daughters were any less powerful. And for some reason, the question felt more important than my mind told me it was.

  “She's also an expath,” James continued. “She can manipulate the emotions of others, though she rarely chooses to do so. There are strict rules governing the manner in which we use our powers on one another. Lyria knows them well.”

  Rules that govern … The phrase sounded familiar.

  “Okay,” I said. “So Lyria's emotion girl. I guess that makes sense, with the whole love thing.”

  It didn't exactly make sense considering that I hadn't seen Lyria display any emotions, but close enough.

  “Anything else?”

  “She's very strong in the glamour, ” James said. Seeing that I didn't understand, he elaborated. “Changing what other people see when they look at her. It's a skill we all share, but some are better at it than most.”

  “And that's it?” I asked. I wasn't actually all that interested in Lyria's powers specifically, but I wanted to get a sense for exactly how outclassed I was here. I was psychic, but if that worked on other Sidhe, it certainly didn't work the same way, because I hadn't caught a stray thought in the Otherworld. Not one. As I waited for James to reply, I tested my pyrokinesis, concentrating just long enough to reach for the fire inside me, verifying that it was there, ready to spark to life the second I called it.

  I couldn't manage a glamour. I wasn't an empath or an expath, but as far as power went, I wasn't doing half bad for someone who only half-belonged here in the first place. Now, if only I could put my finger on why it seemed so important to match my powers against theirs.

  “Lyria does have a few other powers,” James admitted. “She can call forth certain emotions in their physical forms—-fire for passion, ice for fear. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”

  So much for my extraordinary fire powers.

  But if my powers weren't “out of the ordinary,” then why were Drogan and Eze bothering to woo me? Why did anybody care about the result of my Reckoning? Why bring me here at all?

  And what was I forgetting?

  “Song's over.” James's mild comment broke me from my thoughts, and I realized that we'd stopped moving. I had no idea how long we'd danced, but as I stood there, the stillness jarring my muscles, I couldn't shake the feeling that it had been hours and that my time here tonight was almost done.

  “Thirsty?” James asked.

  I nodded. Putting heart and soul into unearthly movements for extended periods of time had a tendency to do that to a person.

  James reached out to the shadows, and as I watched, he pulled at its edges, and the darkness complied, stretching and molding itself into two cups, one for each of his hands.

  “Water?” he said, offering me one of the cups.

  I took it and smiled at the feel of the shadow, metallic yet silky. I raised it toward my lips and glanced down at the water. It was clear and there was light in it despite the darkness of its container. It smelled fresh and sweet, like dew, only more so. I lifted the cup to my lips, and as I did, a reflection danced along the water's surface.

  My necklace.

  Without warning, the necklace grew very hot against my skin, and I reached for the chain, to snatch the pendant away before it burned me. My fingers grazed the side of the pendant, and it was only through luck that it didn't cut me again. My contact with the charm was brief, but in that instant, Annabelle's voice flashed into my head, clearer than any Earth-related thought I'd had since we'd started dancing.

  “No food. Nothing to drink, either. It's another one of those overlaps between Celtic and Greek mythology. Several sources I found mentioned that if a human eats or drinks in the Otherworld, they can never leave. Ever.”

  I dropped the cup as if it had scalded me the way the pendant had a moment before. I expected it to shatter, but instead it dissolved, losing its shape as the darkness swirled and fled back to the living shadows. As for the water, it lay at my feet, sparkling in a way that looked sinister to me now.

  Water wasn't supposed to be that clean or that pure or that anything. It wasn't supposed to be beautiful or smell divine. This wasn't my kind of water, and I wasn't supposed to drink it.

  “What's wrong?” James asked, but the moment before the words left his mouth, I saw something flash across his face—a split second (or maybe not even that) of disappointment—and I lowered my shields in hope of hearing his thoughts.

  So close.

  I took a step back.

  “Bailey?”

  He'd tried to make me drink. He'd tried to trick me into drinking. He'd offered it up so innocently, but if Annabelle was right, then there was nothing innocent about it. Once I ate or drank something here, I wouldn't be able to go back, and if I did, I'd waste away, longing for what I could never have again.

  With James's horrible thought still echoing in my head, I knew beyond all knowing that was what he had intended. A-belle had wondered if that kind of trick would work on me, because I was part Sidhe, but what she'd forgotten, what I kept forgetting, was that I was part human, too.

  They'd brought me here to seduce the Sidhe in me, and barring that, to fool the human.

  And James was at the center of it all. The connection I'd thought there was between us. The way he'd made me laugh.

  “Bay?” James wrinkled his forehead, confused.

  Oh, I just bet he was.

  “Don't call me that,” I said. “You don't get to call me that.”

  He'd been so nice. So friendly. He'd been glad to see me. He'd acted like he'd spent his whole life missing me, like all of them had, when really, he'd been trying to get me to drink. I went over every word he'd spoken, and realized that from the beginning, his words had been crafted with one goal in mind.

  He wanted me to stay here.

  “That's what this is about, isn't it?” I asked, my voice ancient and small and shrill all at the same time. “That's why you brought me here, that's what this Reckoning is. It isn't just choosing sides. You don't care if I choose Seelie or Unseelie. You just want me to choose. You want me to stay here.”

  But why? I was one of the Fates. I couldn't stay here. I belonged to the Nexus and to Earth. I couldn't live in the Otherworld the way the others could. So why the persuasion? Why the tricks
?

  Maybe, I thought slowly, it's not so much that they want me here as it is that they don't want me anywhere else. Maybe they don't want me in the mortal realm.

  The ideas were fleeting, wisps of smoke that slipped through my fingers again and again, but I clutched at the pendant, not caring whether it cut me or not, and things grew more concrete in my mind.

  “We do care which court you choose,”‘ Xane said. “My father and I would very much like you to pledge yourself to the Unseelie. There’s a greatness in you, Bailey. You could be great here.”

  Xane was oblivious to the fact that I was freaking out—that, or he just didn't care. Axia showed slightly more tact.

  “You're confused,” she said, “and that's our fault, but we play by rules not our own. You speak truly enough. You weren't meant for the mortal world, and we do want you to come home, where you belong. But as Xane said, the choice offered to you at your Reckoning tomorrow night is an important one. The Seelie Court would be honored to have you.”

  “Tomorrow night,” I repeated. “My Reckoning is tomorrow? And you expect me to choose courts?”

  “You must choose,” Lyria said softly. “That's what a Reckoning is.”

  “That's what a Reckoning is,” I repeated. “A choice that's not really a choice. You pick one of two options, and you're stuck with it for the rest of your immortal life.”

  “It's our way,” Axia said, her voice louder, but as gentle as her sister's. “There comes a time when all Sidhe must choose. For you, that time is tomorrow. For the rest of us, it could come any day.”

  “You mean none of you have been Reckoned?” I asked. I'd been operating under the assumption that I was the only un-Reckoned person left. They were thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years old. I was a senior in high school, yet somehow I was the one on the chopping block?

  “You've lived in mortal years,” Axia said. “We have not. We're considered young still. Our time will come, and when it does, we—each and every one of us—will choose, just as you must choose tomorrow.”

  “And if I choose, what then?”

  The three heirs looked at one another.

  “Then all will be as it should be,” Axia said finally.

  “I'll be stuck here,” I said. I couldn't drink the water. I couldn't eat the food. Somehow, I severely doubted I could pledge myself to either of the Otherworldly courts and expect to be allowed to go home.

  “Would that really be so terrible?” James asked. I couldn't let myself wonder at the tone in his voice and what it meant. “You love it here. Think of the way it feels to run. Think of the singing and the songs and the burning and the cold. Think of your connection to us and ours to you.”

  Gone was the awkward goofball, and in his place stood someone far more eloquent, someone who didn't seem nearly as human as he had moments before. Someone I still felt connected to nevertheless …

  “You played me,” I said. “This whole time, you've just been …” I trailed off. I couldn't even say it.

  “I haven't told you anything that wasn't true,” James said. “I want you here. We all want you here. You're amazing, Bailey. I don't think you understand just how special you are.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why am I so special?”

  “Because the power comes through you.” James's words were followed by the loudest silence I'd ever heard. I inferred that whatever he'd just told me, it wasn't something that I was supposed to know.

  “The power comes through me,” I repeated. “Of course. I'm your connection to the mortal realm. I weave life, it fuels your power. That's how the story goes, isn't it? But I'm not like Alecca. I don't live in the Nexus. I'm human—”

  “Part human,” Xane corrected. “And not even that for long.”

  Axia gave him a sharp look, and he shut his mouth.

  “You guys want me to pledge so that I'll be trapped here. No, not even here—you want me with the Seal, all the time, because the more I'm there, the more power I feed into your land.”

  “It's your land, too, Bailey,” Axia said. “There are those of us who believe that the Old Ones were mistaken in separating the Three from the rest of us. You would be welcome in the Otherworld, whenever you wished to come.”

  In her own way, she was trying to be nice. Considering her mother was probably the mastermind behind this whole setup, I wasn't sure I could expect much more from her. But James … I'd thought he was my friend. I'd thought he was interested. For a split second, I may have even been ridiculous enough to think on some subconscious level that he was my soul mate.

  I was an idiot. Boys like James … Sidhe like James weren't interested in half-mortal girls like me.

  It didn't matter how right this felt. It didn't matter how beautiful darkness was here, or how much I longed to stand in the Otherworldly light. The running, the connection, the intense sense of belonging and the fact that this place ran in my blood—none of it mattered.

  I didn't belong here.

  No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't. Why hadn't I seen that before?

  “I won't stay,” I said. “I won't choose. You can't make me.”

  “Can't we?”

  The voice sounded something like Axia's, but older, cooler, and I didn't allow myself to turn around, because the last thing I wanted to do right now was face down Eze.

  “You have some power, Bailey, but here, you are not as powerful as you believe. There are rules, and you will abide by them. This is our land, Drogan's and mine. We rule here, and you will choose.”

  I didn't want to listen to her words. Instead, I told myself a story, one that Annabelle had told me. After the Olympians had defeated the Titans, the three brothers had divided the world between them. Zeus got the heavens. Hades got the underworld. Poseidon got the seas.

  Drogan and Eze weren't the only ones who ruled here. I may not have been as powerful as the two of them were, but Morgan was. She could help me. She had to.

  “You dare think her name in our presence?” Drogan asked. “She is a traitor to her kind. She betrays us by living among them. She travels freely through their waters and ours as if they were one.”

  Clearly, that was the Sidhe equivalent of blasphemy. Or maybe, given what James had told me about the difficulty that most Sidhe had crossing over most of the time, it was something to be coveted.

  “She cannot help you now, Bailey,” Eze said, her voice gentle and kind again. I wished it weren't. She was scarier this way. I would have rather she glared at me than smile.

  “You think us villains, but we're not, Bailey. We're just trying to save you—-from yourself and from what that world would do to you. You would grow old there. You would die there. And what would happen to the world then? You spin their lives. What will happen when you stop?”

  I'd never thought of my own death before, not in any kind of concrete way. Even in the moments when I'd absentmindedly wondered who would come to my funeral, I hadn't thought about what my dying would really mean. I was the Third Fate. What would happen to the world when I died? Even if I lived to be a hundred, eventually I'd die.

  Who would be Life then?

  The guilt trip hit me like a cement truck, and Drogan, sensing weakness, picked up where his sister had left off. “You see the wisdom in my sister's words, but soon you'll convince yourself that that may be a risk worth taking, that you won't die for years, that perhaps your immortal blood will sustain you or that you may pass it on to the children you will someday bear.”

  I had to wonder why he was talking me out of my guilt as easily as Eze had talked me into it.

  “But there are other things that staying in the mortal realm would do, Bailey. Things that will happen to your world if you insist on staying there.” Drogan smiled, his white teeth nearly reflective in their brightness. “There is a balance to be maintained. You know better than anyone how delicate that balance can be.”

  I'd felt the imbalance in the world's web and I'd traced it back to myself, back to my mixed blo
od. Suddenly, everything I'd discovered earlier in the night, everything I'd wondered before crossing over, came back to me. There was some magic in this place, some dampening charm that left my mind fuzzy and made it hard for me to concentrate on these thoughts, but looking at Drogan, it became all too clear.

  They'd tried to tempt me here.

  Eze had added guilt to the mix.

  And now we were dealing with blackmail.

  “What happened in school today,” I said. “That was you.”

  James had told me that crossing over was ordinarily very difficult for Sidhe. There were days when they couldcross, and Morgan obviously didn't have trouble with it, but there were limits, limits that were in place for good reason. Because when something happened to lift the limits and Sidhe could cross over at will, things got messy.

  Especially if things getting messy was the point.

  “For a short period of time, your own balance—half human, half Sidhe—was enough to set things right,” Eze said, her voice kinder and more horrible than ever. “But that time has passed. Now the greater balance is at stake. There have always been Three, who live in between the worlds. Now there are two in the Otherworld and one in yours.” She paused and then laid it out for me. “As long as you live in the mortal realm, the gateway between realms will remain open.”

  I'd thought it myself, before I'd come to the Other-world and forgot why I was here, I was liminal. I was in transition. I was off balance, and that had very real consequences.

  “And as long as that gate remains open,” Drogan said delicately, “we have no way of ensuring that others of our kind don't use your world to … play.”

  No way of ensuring, my butt. They'd probably ordered the others to attack Jessica. That was a demonstration. They were showing me what could happen, what they could do. That was the whole point, wasn't it? They'd found a way to use the imbalance to suit their whims. As long as I lived in the mortal world, they'd be free to mess with it, and until I agreed to stay here, they wouldn't stop.

  Maybe they were lying to me, maybe I could call their bluff …