Fates

15

Corinthe woke up, gasping, from another dream. That made two in two nights. She’d never dreamed before, as an Executor or as a Fate. She’d never needed to sleep.

What did it mean? What was she becoming?

The fuzziness of waking up was unfamiliar, too—she felt disoriented as shreds of the dream came back to her, weaving and melding with the events of last night:

Luc’s hands on her waist, then in her hair. Luc’s eyes, staring into hers. Their lips almost touching. Their bodies creating heat in the cold atmosphere. And then the two of them standing on a wooden pier, extending endlessly in both directions across the Ocean of Shadows. Gazing at the night sky. A shooting star streaking the darkness. Luc’s laughter. Another star falling … and then another, and another. The shower of sparks becoming a downpour. Constellations collapsing. The pier catching fire, trapping them, forcing them to dive into the ocean, where Figments pulled at their limbs, pleading. Stars coming down like fiery rain, blinding. And then the stars turning into headlights, careering, heading right toward Corinthe.

Principal Sylvia’s car, Luc gone. Sylvia grinning wickedly, baring one long, sharp tooth, just like Miranda’s.

“What’s so funny?” Corinthe’s own question echoing inside her head.

Sylvia’s grin. “I’m not the one driving.”

St. Jude dancing wildly in the window. Corinthe looking down; the steering wheel in her own hands. Trying to swerve out of the way.

Then, the moment of impact: sudden, screeching, horrible. Jolting her awake.

The two suns were already high above the mountains, and a film of sweat lined her brow. Luc’s sweatshirt was balled up under her head, and the wall of the boulder at her back barely provided any shade. She sat up slowly, trying to gauge her dizziness.

Not too bad.

She leaned against the boulder for a moment, wondering where Lucas had gone. He wasn’t sleeping beside her—he must have gone to forage for more supplies.

She should never have slept, yet last night the urge had been too overwhelming to fight. Over the course of their hike yesterday, she’d managed to steal small bits of energy from Luc every time he touched her. She could draw no strength from the dry, dead terrain and was forced to use his.

It made her feel guilty.

Another feeling she had never known before.

It shouldn’t matter that she was using him to get home. That she stitched strength from him to keep going—she took hardly enough for him to notice. It wasn’t possible to drain another being of all its life energy anyway. At least, not as far as Corinthe knew. She could only tap into it, feel it, feed off the excess. It was barely enough for her to even stay standing. Definitely not enough strength to fulfill her task. But she had hoped it would at least be enough to get her home, where she would be healed fully.

And now he was gone, and she could feel the absence of his energy in her body. She felt brittle, exhausted: a worn shell.

When he had asked to see his sister, it had taken nearly all the power she had stored up. But she had wanted to give it to him, as a gift, to show that she was not so terrible, to show that she could do beautiful things as well as bad ones.

She wanted him to understand.

She cared what he thought of her.

The fire had burned down to a few embers. There was no sign of Luc, no evidence of where he’d gone. But then she spotted it: scratched into the hard packed dirt were several words. Corinthe began to shake as she pushed herself to her knees.

Don’t follow me.

Then, as if an afterthought: I’m sorry.

Her chest tightened, and she suddenly felt she couldn’t breathe. She fumbled inside her shirt for the reassuring weight of the locket.

Gone.

And just as quickly, a flood of anger replaced her shock, drove out every other feeling. He had taken the locket. Stolen it.

A sickening feeling opened up deep in the pit of her stomach. He had tricked her. Last night, he opened up to her, and in turn, she had told him things she shouldn’t have. Things about what she did and where she was from.

It had all been an act. Getting her to let her guard down. So she would sleep. So he could steal the locket and leave her.

Corinthe wrapped the sweatshirt around her shoulders and stood up—still dizzy, still weak, but fueled by anger. The trail they had followed the previous day continued down the rocky hillside. Corinthe began to jog, half blind with fury. And some other feeling, too; one she had no words for. It was like falling backward. Helpless, out of control.

And then it came to her: betrayed.

Had this been his plan all along, to leave her stranded, alone without anyone to help her?

Though she had lain beside him all night, she had eked barely enough energy from him to combat the hornets’ venom for a few short hours. As she wound slowly down the mountain, she could feel it pumping through her blood. Hot and thick, poisoning her slowly, making it hard to breathe, taking away her strength. Her arms and legs felt like lead, and she stumbled, fell, cursing when sharp rocks tore into her palms.

She kept trying, but she could pull no energy from this dry and desiccated world. She drove her fingers into the rocky ground, hoping to pull something, anything, but this world had very little life to give. It trickled out in tiny drops, accompanied by a pain so sharp and deep it took her breath away.

She broke the connection, trembling. There was hopelessness here, as if the very earth under her fingers had stopped trying to live.

If she didn’t find Luc soon, she would die.

She thought of the vial Rhys had given her—thankfully, it was still in her possession—but she resisted the urge to drink it. As long as she could move, she didn’t dare use it. Not yet. Who knew how far she had to go, how long it would take her to find him?

The suns beat down with their oppressive heat and a sudden wave of dizziness made the rocks lurch from left to right. She stumbled, then righted herself. Movement flickered along the edges of her vision, almost like people creeping through the rocks next to her, but when she turned her head, she saw only towering arrangements of stone.

She had to find Lucas. She had to get to the flower before he did.

Then, when she was strong again, she had to kill him. It was fate.

She’d allowed herself to trust Luc—a weakness far worse than the one caused by the venom in her veins. Perhaps living in Humana had caused her emotions to grow chaotic. She was becoming too much like humans, questioning things that she must just accept.

What would happen to the balance, to the order, if people starting choosing for themselves?

Corinthe’s breath rasped in her throat, and her chest felt as if it were on fire. She thought of Pyralis, of sweet relief, a place without pain. Soon. She’d be home soon.

The path flattened out as she reached the lower foothills. With the decreased altitude it was easier to breathe now, although the tightness in her chest remained. She could see only red sand and towering, gray trees, arms twisted as though in lament. Had she somehow gotten lost? Rhys had said the river was a day’s journey inland over the pass, so where was it?

Her neck was hot and sticky with sweat. She felt as if she’d been running for hours. She sat down hard on a large rock, gasping for air. There was no life under her fingers; there was no pulse left in this world.

Her vision spun in and out of focus. A wavering white form, like a mirage, moved along the path toward her, and Corinthe didn’t have the will left to even stand. She reached for her knife, remembering too late that Luc had taken that, too.

The figure stopped directly in front of her, shifting so its features became suddenly visible. Corinthe cried out. Miranda.

Miranda would save her.

“How did you find me?” Corinthe asked.

Miranda didn’t answer. “Why is the boy still alive?” she asked.

Fingers dug into Corinthe’s arms and lifted her to her feet.

As soon as Miranda touched her, Corinthe’s body reacted. It latched on to the energy pulsing from her Guardian and pulled. Corinthe drank. She couldn’t stop. Strength flowed through her limbs; her vision cleared immediately.

She’d never felt anything like it before in her life. The energy was thick and powerful and wild, and Corinthe wanted more. Instinct took over. She opened her mind. She pushed for a stronger connection and stitched in more.

Then she was flying through the air.

She slammed into a rock wall and breath whooshed from her lungs. Miranda stalked toward her, eyes blazing.

“Never do that again,” Miranda spat out.

Corinthe pushed easily to her feet. She felt better than she had since leaving Humana—stronger, even, than she did after feasting in the garden. A wild anger flowed through her veins. She’d never felt so out of control before. Explosive. Miranda’s energy writhed under Corinthe’s skin like a wild animal, fighting to get free.

“Why are you here?” Corinthe demanded. “Are you watching me?”

“You’ve lost the locket,” Miranda said. Her hair flowed around her head, as though charged with its own electricity. “How could you let this happen?”

Corinthe clenched her hands tightly into fists. Rage unlike anything she’d ever experienced made her body shake. Never had she wanted to strike out at someone so badly. “I’m dying. And all you care about is a stupid piece of jewelry?”

“It’s not just any piece of jewelry and you know it. You allowed that human boy to steal it from you,” Miranda said. “Maybe you don’t want to go home after all?”

There it was: the terrible look in her eyes that Corinthe had never seen before. The anger inside fell away so quickly, Corinthe felt as if the world had been pulled from beneath her feet.

Miranda was right. She had let her guard down and allowed Luc the opportunity to take the locket. It was her own fault. She did want to become a Fate again, more than anything.

“I’ll get it back,” Corinthe said desperately. “But I don’t know where he went.”

“He’s found his way to Kinesthesia already.” Miranda inhaled deeply, and for a minute, they stood in silence. “I’m sorry for getting angry,” Miranda said at last. “There are too many things at stake, and I only want for you to get home. Here. Take this.” Miranda tossed something at Corinthe’s feet.

Corinthe leaned down and picked up the heavy key. It was looped on a thick chain, as if meant to be worn like a necklace. She turned it over in her hands and made out the faint image of a spiral, tarnished by the years.

“What does it open?”

“I can’t help you any more, Corinthe. I’ve done too much already. This has to fall to you. This is your task to complete. Go now, quickly, before he figures his way out of Kinesthesia. Do not allow him to use the locket.” Miranda’s voice grew soft as she closed the distance between them. “You must kill the boy. You know that, right?”

A new resolve filled Corinthe. She had started to feel too much. She had allowed herself to grow weak. She was simply the Executor of the marble, as she had been hundreds of other times. “I know,” she said. “I won’t fail again.”

“You are so close.” Miranda gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind Corinthe’s ear. Corinthe was ashamed, now, for having been frightened of her Guardian, even momentarily. Miranda was the only one who had ever cared for Corinthe, cared enough to try to ensure that she return home. “Go now, before he gets too far ahead of you.”

Miranda took several steps away from Corinthe, and the suns glinted off a new ring on her finger. The glare made Corinthe shield her eyes. There was a brief, blinding flash of light, and then Miranda was gone.

The energy Corinthe had taken from Miranda had restored her somewhat, and she began to run. In no time at all, she had reached the black river. The current rippled in several directions at once, an illusion that made her head dizzy.

Corinthe didn’t hesitate. She took a deep breath, and she dove.

Icy water swirled over her head, knocking away her breath. She fought for the surface, but the current caught her, pulled her deeper, into the darkness and the black.

Her lungs burned.

What if there was no gateway here after all?

What if she had jumped in at the wrong spot?

Then, suddenly, she felt it: the river released her and her body moved freely, as if she were swimming through air. She could breathe as well. Here, the current seemed to be pulling her in one direction, so she didn’t fight it. Hopefully, she would find Kinesthesia. She must find it.

She focused on logic and process, the very things that Kinesthesia represented. It was a world at the very center of the universe, the heartbeat that kept everything else in rhythmic harmony.

The cool rush of the river became the soothing hum of thousands of different worlds vibrating all around her like small swirling galaxies, and within reach of so many different possibilities, she momentarily wondered if Luc was right.

Could there be choice in a universe so large?

But if everyone had choice, who would maintain the balance?

Corinthe swam through a comforting, familiar buzz, as though Luc had left a trail of warmth in his wake. She was beginning to feel more comfortable in the Crossroad, remembering that if you didn’t resist, you could more easily control your path. All she had to do was lean into it, stay calm, and let her instincts lead her. The water around her started to grow thicker, like molasses. But it was blacker and tasted faintly metallic. She held her breath as she found herself submerged in the thick liquid, pushing on her chest as though it were trying to suffocate her. Corinthe’s arms screamed in protest at the effort it took to move, and she fought for the surface. Each stroke was harder than the last. The water was no longer water.

It was thicker—and colder, too—and felt like lead all around her.

Corinthe managed to break the surface and inhaled deeply, knowing she’d made it out of the Crossroad. She struggled to the edge of the river, where a grid framework lined the shore. The liquid metal grabbed at her legs, clawed at her waist, dragged her backward. She just managed to hook an arm over a piece of the metal frame on the banks of the river.

She pulled.

And, suddenly, thankfully, the river released her and she was out.

Liquid metal soaked her clothes and hair, impossibly heavy. She wrung it out the best she could before she stared out over the landscape of grids and vast gears, motion and thunderous noise. She had made it to Kinesthesia.

The pain here was immense. A world of metal and fire—no nature, no growth, no life at all. Already she found it difficult to breathe. She knew she must find Luc quickly. She could not hope to last in this world very long.

Showers of brilliantly colored sparks erupted each time the enormous gears grated together, pumping out the logic of the universe, the order and the time. The world was laid out across a massive metal grid floor. Gears spun all around her, some as large as the Golden Gate Bridge, and they connected with others the size of her fist.

They moved together fluidly, shifting and changing, hooking up with new gears that rose from the ground. Some fast, some slow, but in perfect harmony. This was the heartbeat of the universe. But each pulse of the giant mechanism sent sharp pain through Corinthe’s body.

The world where logic was generated.

Between the gaps in the grid, Corinthe could see more machinery churning away, and multicolored wires braided together, running between them. But beyond that, she knew, was an infinite abyss—a swirling chaos at the core of this world.

But where was Luc?

The grid was crisscrossed with metal walkways, each about three feet wide. But they seemed much narrower with spitting metal below them. The heat was intense. Steam rose from her clothing, hissed up from grates in the ground.

A low vibration shook the entire structure and gave Corinthe the impression of being on a storm-tossed boat. She barely managed to keep from stumbling. Giant pistons pumped up and down, emitting bursts of steam. Her gaze moved along the arm that rose and fell, connecting a cog to an enormous gear.

Luc was standing underneath it.

Even from a distance, she could tell he was studying her locket, trying to figure out how it worked.

Before she could call out—or decide whether she should call out, whether that would make him run—he turned and disappeared behind a piston the size of a house. She began to run.

Behind the piston where she had seen Luc disappear was a suspension bridge made of steel mesh, which spanned a monstrous gap over a chasm of darkness, in which thousands of giant metal teeth were grinding and gnashing together.

On the other side of the chasm was a clock tower at least twenty stories high, whose peak was obscured by thick clouds of steam. Each time the second hand moved, a tremendous tick reverberated through the heavy air.

Luc had already crossed the bridge and had made it to the door of the tower.

She risked calling his name, but either he didn’t hear or he pretended not to. The suspension bridge lacked a railing, and it swayed as she shifted her weight onto it, raising her arms for balance.

Don’t look down.

She kept her gaze focused on the clock tower. As quickly as she could, one foot in front of the other, she began to walk. Each time the bridge shifted, her pulse leapt. She felt as though she were crossing a vast, dark mouth belching foul steam. She couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be pulverized by all those metal teeth.

Fear drove through her, made her insides tight. She wondered whether any of the humans she had helped ease out of the world had felt the way she did now.

The idea made her stomach swing. She hoped not.

It seemed to take hours to cross over to the clock tower, and by then, Luc was nowhere to be seen. When she felt solid steel under her feet once more, she wanted to cry in relief. Instead, she threw herself at the door of the clock tower, grateful that it gave way easily to the pressure of her touch, and pushed her way inside.

In the middle of the small, circular room, which was filled with more machinery, more pendulums and cogs, gears and pulleys, was Luc. The noise was slightly quieter in here.

“You,” he said, when he saw her. He had the decency to look guilty, at least.

“You didn’t think I’d catch up with you, did you?” Corinthe kept her voice neutral, ignoring the fact that Luc was pale, that he looked exhausted and afraid. She would not make the same mistake twice.

“Look, I’m sorry.” Luc raked a hand through his hair. “I need to save my sister. And I can’t risk—”

“What?” Corinthe’s voice faltered. She couldn’t ignore the way he was looking at her: the warmth, the pleading.

“You,” he said, after several seconds.

Corinthe stared at him, trying to decipher the meaning behind his words.

Luc moved, shifted closer to her. Corinthe reached for her knife that wasn’t there. Could she fight him off if he attacked her? She was stronger now, thanks to Miranda. She would put up a good fight. But she didn’t know whether she could kill him.

She didn’t want to kill him.

Miranda had said she had no choice.

Of course she had no choice.

Did she?

A smudge of grease streaked one of Luc’s cheeks. In that instant, Corinthe remembered a task she had once been charged with: a mechanic who was to be injured so he could no longer perform his job.

All it had taken was a jack, pushed just out of balance. Corinthe didn’t question why or what would happen to the man afterward, but she knew the accident had been necessary to set him onto his destined path.

The marbles—her tasks, after all—were about balance and order.

Just like Kinesthesia.

But now she wondered what had happened to him—to that mechanic. Rob. The name resurfaced suddenly. She was shocked that she had carried it with her all this time.

“I think it would be easier if we just went our separate ways,” Luc said softly. But his voice told her the opposite. His voice said I want to go with you, and Corinthe felt, suddenly, as if the whole shifting, spinning mechanism of Kinesthesia, as if the heartbeat of the whole universe, paused for just an instant.

“We’re going to the same place,” Corinthe said. “We cannot go separate ways. Our destinies are intertwined.” And it was true—she knew it was true. But exactly how they’d been twisted together, and for what purpose, she didn’t know.

Luc sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. His dark T-shirt was torn and she got a glimpse of his stomach, the pattern of his ribs. It made her throat go dry. She wanted to touch him, to heal him.

Luc reached into his pocket and extracted the locket. Then he offered it to her.

“Why are you giving it back?” She hesitated for only a second before she slipped it over her head and tucked it safely under her shirt.

Luc looked sheepish. “I couldn’t figure out how the damn thing worked,” he admitted. “I jumped into the river, and the current nearly took me down. I pulled myself into this place.”

“So you do need me after all.” It gave her a stupid amount of joy to say it and to know it was true.

Before Luc could reply, a series of shuddering bangs and shrill whistles sounded in the air. Luc cried out, and Corinthe covered her ears. The gears of the clock began to shift. Pendulums swung wildly; cogs rolled loose, spinning frantically, letting off a volley of sparks.

“Watch out!” Luc shouted.

Corinthe whirled around and saw an enormous cog bearing down on them; its steely sharp edges lit up in the flickering spray of sparks. She was temporarily stunned, frozen, and the word flashed in her head, huge, like a roar of black: death.

Luc yanked her out of the way seconds before she would have been flattened.

“What the hell?” He had to shout over the noise. “What’s happening?”

“I—I don’t know!” Corinthe shouted back. This was all wrong. Kinesthesia was a place of order, of equilibrium.

Angry blue and yellow sparks began shooting from the machinery like fireworks and a loud, steely groan shook the ground under their feet. Smoke clotted the air. Pieces of the tower came tumbling down on them, hurtling through the air like giant pieces of shrapnel, severing the wires below.

A tall spray of bright orange sparks showered up in front of them. Corinthe ducked, just barely.

The giant cog screeched and shuddered, then, with an audible snap, broke free from its anchor. Something slammed into her back and she went sprawling onto the metal floor. Luc rolled out of the way. When she pushed to her feet, she saw her knife wedged into a section of steel grating right behind them.

The floor shifted, and Corinthe fought to stay upright. The smoke grew thicker and blacker. The rhythmic ticking of the clock stuttered, then became irregular, like a malfunctioning heart.

“We have to get out of here!” Luc shouted. He jumped over a writhing live wire and grabbed the knife handle, dislodging it from the grate. “Do you know where the gateway is?”

“No, but we can’t stay down here!” The base of the clock was the least safe place to be, considering all the pieces of fiery metal falling on them. There were copper stairs spiraling along the inside walls of the clock, and they scrambled toward them.

Luc grabbed her arm and yanked her forward several feet just as a beam crashed through the grid where she’d been standing. She didn’t have time to thank him.

They ran to the stairs, dodging electrified wires and crashing metal, and began to climb. Lucas took the lead. She watched him jump up several steps, over a fallen piece of bent steel, but before she could follow, a torn wire flipped into her way. There was no way around it. She turned back, only to find herself trapped by the spitting wire.

Lucas shouted her name and she saw him through the thickening smoke, climbing over the bent beam. The walls shook and the stairs became detached from the sides of the tower. She gripped the railing and then ran up, dodging the lethal end of the wire to jump over it. She landed with a jarring thump, but she made it over. Luc raced to her side and dragged his sweatshirt off her shoulders. He whipped the shirt away from them. Flames licked at the material, growing until they engulfed the entire thing. Corinthe watched, wide-eyed.

The tower shook violently, slamming her against Lucas. He held her tight against his chest, covering her head. A large gear broke free above them and crashed down, embedding itself into the stairs.

All around them, Kinesthesia was collapsing. Metal twisted and groaned under the chaotic mess. Live wires zapped and crackled like witches laughing with glee.

This place was the pulse of the universe, keeping everything outside it regulated and connected, and it was falling apart. All the worlds were intertwined, feeding off each other to keep balance in all. Corinthe shuddered to think of the consequences that would ripple outward because of this.

They fought their way to the top of the clock tower, where there was a narrow platform below the back of the face. The stairs came up to the platform from underneath, but the trapdoor wouldn’t open. Debris had fallen onto it. Finally, Lucas managed to shove it open, and they clambered up onto the narrow ledge of grated steel.

“Now what?” he screamed over the chaos.

The air was heavy with black, acrid smoke. Corinthe’s eyes stung, and she pulled the neck of her shirt up over her mouth. The smoke burned her lungs, made her cough uncontrollably.

“What are we looking for?” Luc asked. He had the crook of his arm covering the lower half of his face and black smudges marked his skin. There was an angry-looking gash just above his wrist.

“Anomalies. Disruptions in the pattern!” she shouted. Like the clothes that stayed frozen in the wind. The tree with blue leaves. Or the river that flowed two ways …

But as they looked around, they could see no element that seemed incongruous. For a second, Corinthe thought she could make out a figure, moving beneath the grating on which they stood … but then an explosion shook the entire tower again and Luc was knocked onto his back on the narrow landing, and Corinthe focused only on him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him up, just as a thick black wire danced through the air from above, writhing like a snake, spitting sparks and lighting tiny fires across dark pools of oil.

They backed up against the clock face. And that was when she saw it: the giant screw holding the hour and minute hands to the clock face did not have normal ridges—instead, the screw had a shape in its top like a keyhole.

Corinthe remembered the key Miranda had given her. “This has to be it.”

She yanked the key from around her neck, but her palms were sweating and it fell to the floor. She dove after it, groping blindly through the sparks and smoke. Her heart beat wildly, and she pushed aside the pain of metal digging into her knees and elbows. Luc yelled something she couldn’t make out over the noise.

Stay calm, Corinthe told herself. Blinking away the smoke, eyes stinging, she ran her hand blindly across the grating and felt something slip underneath her fingers. At that instant, her vision cleared. She watched the chain jerk down through the grating—quickly, violently, as if it had been pulled from down below.

Until she realized that the key was, miraculously, still clutched in her right fist. It must have become detached from the chain. She stood, her hand shaking so badly she failed the first two times she attempted to insert it into the lock. Luc put his hand over hers, steadying it. Together, they turned it.

Instead of causing the clock hands to rotate, turning the key made the whole face of the clock turn. It revolved with a grinding, grating noise and came to rest upside down, with the twelve at the bottom and the six at the top, before swinging open like a door.

The winds of the Crossroad waited, almost comforting in contrast to where they were now. Corinthe stood gasping at the vision of serene turquoise light and the smell of clouds, of sky.

A deafening groan sounded above them, and the tower began to collapse into itself. Kinesthesia was falling apart. Corinthe had no idea what that meant for the rest of the universe, but she knew it was bad. Very bad.

She pulled the key from the lock just as the floor shifted underneath them. The key went tumbling downward, disappearing in the smoke.

“Go!” Luc shouted.

This is all my fault.

It was her last thought before the entire tower collapsed over them.