Fates (18 page)

“What happened?” Corinthe hugged her knees to her chest, brushing his arm accidentally with one hand. Her fingers were so small, so delicate, her unpolished nails like little seashells. He wanted to curl his fingers around hers until this stupid burning in his chest stopped. Corinthe said, “You don't want to tell me. That's okay.”

Luc sucked in a deep breath. That was the problem. He did want to. “We thought she would come back,” he blurted out, and immediately felt like screaming. No, his voice felt raw, burnt, as though he had been screaming the entire time—the full ten years since she'd left. That was the sad, pathetic truth. That for years after she walked out, Luc, his dad, even Jas—they'd all believed she would come home. For four years Luc had worn the sweater she'd given him for Christmas to school every year on picture day, even after it was far too small, in case she came home suddenly and wanted to frame his photos.

Luc had been only seven when she left, but he remembered the day perfectly.

“Be right back,” she had said, looping her ratty leather bag onto her arm, sparking up a cigarette. The cloying scent of clove lingered in the air for days after she was gone.

He'd watched her walk down the porch steps; her yellow cotton dress looked dingy in the sun. Her dark hair, streaked with old highlights, was pulled into a messy ponytail.

She glanced over her shoulder one last time, but she didn't wave.

He and Jas had waited hours for her to come back.

Eventually, Jas had gotten hungry. She sat in the middle of the playroom crying. Luc went to the cupboard—he knew Jasmine loved graham crackers, but they were too high up to reach. Climbing on the counter was not allowed, so he used the broom handle to knock the box from the shelf. When the box hit the floor, crackers scattered, broken, across the kitchen tiles.

Little fuzzy-haired Jasmine sat down in her footie pj's and started eating the graham crackers straight off the floor. After a moment, Luc joined her and started to reassemble the pieces, like a puzzle. She laughed at the new game and together they spent the afternoon right there on the linoleum.

When his father got home that night and found them still alone, found the money in the canning jar gone, it was as though he, too, vanished.

“She died.” He'd never said those words. “My mom died.” His eyes stung. Smoke.

Corinthe sat so quietly he thought maybe she hadn't heard. Then she reached out, very slowly, and laid her hand on his. They were warm now, and Luc swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“I'm sorry,” she said haltingly, as though these words, too, were unfamiliar.

Luc cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, shit happens.” He detached his hand from hers, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “So what about you? Mother? Father? Sisters and brothers?”

Corinthe shook her head. “We have no family,” Corinthe said. “I did have sisters, but it was
different
from in your world.” Corinthe bit her lip. “Still, I miss them.”

Your world.
The words reminded Luc that Corinthe was different; that he didn't know
what
she was. He wanted to ask her to explain but he found he couldn't. He was almost afraid of what she might say. He wasn't ready to hear her speak the words: she wasn't human.

But he understood, too, that he and Corinthe had one thing in common: Corinthe wanted to go home. She wanted to go
back.
Luc knew the feeling.

“So why did you leave?” Luc asked,

“I didn't leave. I … I made a mistake.” Her voice cracked and he had to strain to hear it over the crackling fire. She looked so lost all of a sudden. He wanted to put his arms around her and keep her safe.

“What kind of mistake?” he asked instead.

She looked at him quickly, then looked back at the fire. “You wouldn't understand.”

Luc had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Try me,” he said. He knew all about mistakes. God, look at his mother. His sister. Hell, even he had more than his share of screwups. The first year at Bay Sun, he almost got kicked off the team. The opponent's right fielder had tripped him—deliberately, Luc was sure of it—and all of a sudden he'd been filled with a blind rage. He didn't even know what he was doing, didn't remember anything until Coach was hauling him backward and he saw that the other guy's nose was bloody.

“I did something no one else had done before. Something terrible.” She shifted again. Now their knees and thighs were touching. He had that insane urge to put his arm around her, but he didn't have the excuse this time. She wasn't shivering anymore.

He settled for leaning back a little and resting his arm just behind her, enough that he could feel the heat from her body and shield her from the cold. There was that smell again. Flowers. It seemed to be getting stronger, seemed that as she got warmer, her skin exhaled it.

“So what?” Luc said. “They … like, kicked you out or something?”

Corinthe nodded. He waited for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he prompted, “So why do you want to go back so bad?”

She turned her head to look at him. A fine line had appeared between her eyebrows. “It's … safe. Everywhere else hurts.” She frowned, and he could tell she was having trouble putting her feelings into words. “When I first came to Humana … to Earth … I hurt all the time. Now it's more of an ache. But in Pyralis I feel right, and warm. Like I belong.” She looked down at her hands. “It's my home.”

Home.
Just that word started a slow ache in his stomach. How many times had he wished he could go home, back to how it
used
to be? When he was younger, he'd bury his head in his pillow and shout until his throat was raw, but it never changed anything.

Luc rubbed his forehead. He was trying to make the pieces of Corinthe's story slot together. “And to get back there, you have to …
do
certain things? Is that it?”

Again, Corinthe nodded. She picked up a handful of those strange pine needles, and fed them one by one into the fire.

Luc licked his lips. He was closer to understanding but wasn't sure he wanted to. “Like kill people?” Must be a real nice place to live.

“I've never killed anyone,” she said fiercely. “I just … I help. I make accidents. What you would call accidents, anyway. Coincidences. And chance events.”

Luc thought of how he had first seen her: the car, the woman slumped on the steering wheel, the way she had run. As the meaning behind her words sank in, he felt as if he might be sick. He closed his eyes and reopened them. “You tried to kill me,” he said.

“This is the first time I've been tasked with a killing,” she said, and for a moment, she looked troubled. No. More than that. Angry.

“Why? I'm not that important, so why kill me?”

Corinthe slid her hand away and tucked it into her lap. “I don't know why.”

“If you don't know why, how can you just do it?” It would be like dribbling the ball down the field as fast as he could, with the goal nowhere in sight. What was the point? “How can you follow orders if you don't understand them?”

“The point is not to understand,” she said simply. “The point is that it needs to happen. It's fated.”

“Was that woman in the car a task?” He braced himself for the answer.

“Yes.”

He was glad that she had admitted it. It was a relief, in a weird way. And something else became clear to him. At Karen's party, she'd been so determined on the boat, as if she knew exactly where to go. She'd been talking to Mike, too. He'd seen her.

“You set up Karen and Mike, didn't you?”

“Yes,” she said, softer this time. “I am sorry about that.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The thing was, he wasn't really mad about it.

“I've done good things, too,” Corinthe said. “Beautiful things. Births and meetings and discoveries … I've given people happiness. Your people.”

“What about you?” Luc asked, without knowing where the question came from. “Have you been happy?”

Corinthe turned to him. The question had obviously surprised her. The fire lit up crazy colors in her eyes—threads of silver and gold, that wild violet color—and for a second, he felt as if he was consumed by her eyes, lost in them.

“I … I don't know,” she responded in a whisper. “I've never thought about it.”

She looked totally vulnerable, totally lost. Alone in the universe. The phrase occurred to Luc suddenly, and he didn't know where it came from. Unthinkingly, he reached out and pulled her hand back into his.

It felt good to touch her.

Too good. He felt a surge of energy, and he lost his breath, as though he'd been running sprints for an hour. The world around them seemed to swirl away. There was only her: her eyes, her smell, the softness of her lips. Her skin burned under his fingers, and after a second's hesitation, she leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. He brought his other hand to her waist; he could feel the soft line of flesh just above her jeans.

They were both breathing hard. Heat radiated between them. Corinthe hesitated, then walked her fingertips over his cheekbones, to his jaw, to his neck.

“I've never  … ,” she said.

“Never what?” He could hardly breathe. He would die if he couldn't kiss her.

She shook her head. Then her expression relaxed, and she smiled. She leaned in closer, and simply laid her head in the crook between his neck and shoulder.

He hooked one arm under her legs and shifted her until she was cradled in his lap. She rested one hand on his chest, right over his heart. He didn't want to move, was afraid she'd pull away. Wanted to go further and didn't want to, too.

They'd been so close to … what? What the hell was he doing? He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.

She kept slipping under his skin in small ways, making him forget who she was. At Rhys's house, she had brushed against his arm and sent his body on high alert. She probably didn't even know she had an effect on him, but he knew it every time she got near him.

At the same time, he wasn't at all sure he could trust her. She'd tried to kill him. She'd led him into this mess in the first place.

That horrible image of Jasmine resurfaced in his mind: trapped in that awful flower, ensnared by the snaking vines. A wave of guilt overpowered him.

“Corinthe?”

She lifted her head. He pulled back a few inches so he wouldn't have to stare into those eyes—the eyes that made him forget who he was and what he was doing.

“I need to see Jasmine. I need to know she's okay.”

Corinthe didn't hesitate. She carefully scooted an arm's length away and picked up the backpack Rhys had given them. In it was a flask of water. “Hold out your hands, like a cup.”

He did. She poured out a stream of cold water. He knew he might need the water later, might regret using it for this purpose, but Jasmine was all that mattered right now.

Corinthe reached behind him and extracted the knife from his pocket, keeping her eyes locked on his. His breath hitched. She had the knife now. But she was so weak her hands trembled. There was no way she could kill him, even if she wanted to.

She merely pricked the end of her finger, and carefully, deliberately, she set the knife back down beside him. She held her hand over his and allowed a drop of her blood to spill into the water.

She cupped her hands under his. His skin tingled as if a small electric charge flowed from her to him. He stared at the surface of the water, but nothing happened.

Beads of sweat broke out on Corinthe's forehead, and her breathing became ragged.

The water rippled like a tiny lake in his hands, and finally, a wavy image of Jasmine appeared. She still lay inside the flower, but already he could see the changes in her. His stomach twisted. Thick veins were visible under her blue-tinged skin.

Corinthe cried out and slumped forward. Luc let the water run out between his fingers and caught her before she fell to the ground.

Her body was shaking. She felt cold under his touch.

“Corinthe?” His pulse pounded in his ears with a dull thumping beat. He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her arms vigorously.

Her eyes fluttered open. Slowly, they focused on him. She shook her head. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “It was difficult to find her.”

Dread seeped under his skin. “That's not good, is it?”

“I can connect with living things, but …” She didn't have to finish for him to know what she meant.

Jas was dying.

Luc wanted to jump up and hike down the mountain in the dark right that second. Wanted to tear apart the whole universe until he found her. But he knew that would be idiotic—a death trap. And his arms were like lead. He hadn't slept for almost two days. A few hours was all he needed.

Then he would find her. He would find her and save her.

No matter what.

C
orinthe 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.