Fates (21 page)

If you believe in fate, maybe this is it.

They stared at each other for a moment more, their bodies leaning ever so slightly toward one another.

“We should …” He let his voice trail off.

“Go?” she finished, but she sounded as if she was having a hard time breathing, too.

Her eyes were on his lips again. His pulse stuttered. He wanted to kiss her desperately, just once. He slid his arm around her waist, and when she didn't protest or try to stop him, he brought her closer against him.

Her fingers rested on his shoulders and she looked up at him from under her eyelashes. Her eyes turned violet around the edge of her irises. He slid his hand up her back, along the curve of her neck, to cradle her head. Only an inch apart. Those lips.

She trailed her fingers along his collarbone and he forgot how to exhale. This was crazy. Insane.

Right.

“Luc,” Corinthe whispered.

And then, suddenly, he felt a whoosh of air at his back and swung around.

“Mike said you were in here with some girl,” Karen spat from the doorway.

Luc backed away from Corinthe instinctively. Karen's cheeks were splotchy and red. Behind her, lounging in the doorway with his arms crossed, was Mike. He shrugged when he met Luc's gaze.

“I can't believe you'd do this to me.” Karen's voice was shaking. She took a step into the room, and for one wild second, Luc thought she might swing at him. “
I
went out with
you,
you know. It's not like I couldn't do better.”

“You're the one screwing around with Mike, Karen.” It felt good to say it out loud, even if it didn't matter anymore.

Karen's mouth opened and closed. She looked at Luc and Corinthe, then to Mike. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said stubbornly.

Corinthe laid a hand on his arm. “Luc,” she said quietly. “Does it really matter? Really?”

She was right. None of this was real.

Maybe it never really had been.

Luc's pulse was a hum underneath his skin as he pushed out of the room and off the boat. He could hear Corinthe running after him. The noise from the party faded around them. Everything was silent except for the lapping of the waves, except for the sound of Corinthe's breath.

There was that smell of flowers again.

A breeze lifted the hair around her face and it danced erratically. The air changed, grew cooler, damper. And he realized that the noise of the party really
had
faded; the fog was rolling in. Suddenly, he and Corinthe were once again alone in the mist.

The boat, the party—it was gone. The moment had passed.

The fog began to swirl, becoming so dense he couldn't even see Corinthe. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed her hand through the thick, cold mist, just as they were wrenched through spinning nothingness like kites on a string.

When the world righted itself again, they found themselves waist deep in cold water.

The mist still hung heavy in the air, but it was different—frozen and salty when he licked his lips. In the distance, a foghorn was blowing.

Boats bobbed against their moorings, and in the distance, he could see the Golden Gate Bridge. They were at the Marina again.

They were still in San Francisco?

Luc turned, some anxiety needling him, demanding attention. They'd been in this exact spot before. Right before … A loud crack filled the silence, and the mast over Luc's head snapped, crashing into the bay only feet from where he stood.

He covered his face against the splash. The next thing he knew, Corinthe was there, so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. Before he could react, a sharp pain seared through his stomach. A wave of pain and nausea made his legs weak and he staggered backward.

He looked down to see the knife handle jutting from his gut.

“O
h God, I didn't mean … It was just there. … I couldn't stop it.” Corinthe gripped the knife in her hand. She couldn't believe what she had done.

But this wasn't real. It couldn't be.

He couldn't die. Not like this.

Luc struggled to the shore, collapsing onto the ground. The knife was slick with blood now. Corinthe sank to her knees in front of him. She reached for his face. She was shaking so hard she was nearly convulsing.

“I don't know what to do,” she whispered. “This was supposed to happen. But it
didn't.
I—”

Luc groaned. He inhaled a ragged breath and pushed himself to his feet. Corinthe immediately wrapped her arm around his waist to help him stay upright. She could feel his energy flickering, fading in and out. She couldn't stitch from him. He didn't have enough strength to spare.

“This isn't real,” he panted. “It can't be. So we just have to keep moving, right?”

She nodded. He leaned into her and together they plunged forward. One foot in front of the other. They made it to the road before his strength finally gave out. There was nowhere to go anyway. He sank to the ground.

Corinthe sat down beside him and slipped her fingers through his again, drawing his head into her lap. His energy was barely detectable, like a flame sputtering in heavy darkness. She was wild with panic—and fear, too: the sickening knowledge that this was what she was meant to do, what the universe had charged her to do.

Luc coughed and shook in her arms. And then, slowly, gently, the fog began to roll in. It swirled around them, stroking its long fingers over his stomach.

“Luc!” she cried. The vision began to fade, and Corinthe felt her limbs trembling. When she thought she'd stabbed him … it was as if a piece of herself had died, too.

There was no knife now. No wound.

Corinthe let out a small sob of relief.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. How could she complete her last task when even the
idea
of his death hurt so badly?

He sat up. “It wasn't real,” he said. He smiled and touched her face.

It will be.
The words were strangling her. Corinthe placed one hand on his chest. As earlier she had been able to draw energy from the tree, now she could feel his emotions vibrating just below his skin, pressure building, as though he might explode. She tried to stitch just a little—to work out some of the venom, some of the despair—even though it made her exhausted.

She could feel his heart hammering. She could sense his confusion, and his longing, and something else. …

How could one person affect the balance so much when the universe was so big?

Why couldn't Luc live?

What would it hurt?

Never before had she been unable to execute a fate. His hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and she noticed for the first time that his ears were a perfect seashell shape, tinged with pink, and that there was a small scar just below his lower lip.

She kept staring, trying to figure out what it was about him that made her act so different. She'd met countless humans during her exile in Humana, had lived among them for ten years, but she had never
understood
one.

Somehow she did understand Luc—wordlessly, deeply.

And yet, what Luc was doing to save his sister still didn't make sense to her. His need to rescue Jasmine was ecstatic and painful, and almost addicting, flowing through his body and out of his skin, into her touch.

“Your sister,” she said automatically, finally pulling her hand away from his chest. “You love her.” It was more of a statement than a question. The concept of love was foreign to Corinthe, but she knew it was very, very powerful.

“Of course I do.” Luc's brow wrinkled.

A question was building inside her, something she had never thought to ask before. She took a deep breath. “What does love feel like?” she blurted out.

He looked at her then. His eyes darkened, shifted, as though shadows were moving underneath them. She suddenly regretted having asked. The question felt far too intimate.

“I mean, you love your sister,” she said hurriedly. “But what does it feel like?”

He ran a hand through his hair and frowned. She wondered if he wouldn't answer, but after a minute's pause, he said, “It's like, you care about someone so much that you'd do anything to keep them safe. That it kills you to think of them getting hurt.”

“I love Pyralis,” she said, knowing that on some level it was true. It was the thing, the idea she felt closest to in the world.

He shook his head. “It's different. You can love places, but not like you love people. Sometimes it feels totally out of control. Like you don't have a choice. Gets under your skin like this itch you can't scratch and it makes you insane, but in a good way, because you know you can't live without it. Kind of like … well … kind of like your whole idea of fate, actually. Now that I think about it.”

Corinthe shifted uncomfortably. It sounded an awful lot like how she felt when Luc touched her. Maybe this squirmy uncertainty inside her—this desire to feel what Luc felt—was yet another sign she was becoming more human.

“Does it feel the same for everyone? I mean, do you love your sister the same way you love that girl on the boat?” she asked.

His eyes flashed. For a second, he looked angry. Then, to her surprise, he smiled.

“No, it's not the same. I thought … Look, I didn't love Karen. I knew we were too different to last. I trusted her, I let her in, and she messed with me. I was pissed. But I can live without Karen. I can't live without my sister. She's all I have. Literally.”

“What about your father?” she prodded.

In Pyralis, the Fates just existed with no beginning or end. There were no parents, no families. They called each other sisters, though there was no real relation.

“My father stopped caring a long time ago,” Luc said, pushing to his feet abruptly.

Corinthe watched his fingers curl into fists at his side and he clenched his jaw, making the muscles there flex and jump. “Ever since, you know. My mother.” He stopped to clear his throat. “He loved her, probably.
I
used to. But now … I don't know. Love changes, I guess; people change. Nothing lasts forever.” His voice broke.

“But how can you go on, believing that?” she asked. He was right, of course—humans didn't live forever—but also completely wrong. He was so innocent, so fragile in that moment that it made Corinthe's chest ache. The universe was so much wilder and greater than Luc could possibly imagine, and she wished she could convey this to him somehow. That there
were
some things that lasted.

He shook his head. “All that matters is right here, right now. Making sure you have one more day, then one more after that.”

For the first time in her life, Corinthe truly understood what being mortal meant. And for her, now, there might not be a tomorrow. The hornets' venom was still working inside her body. She would die if she couldn't reach Pyralis in time.

There was a weight in her stomach, a curdling sense of guilt. Yes, guilt. Because she knew Luc trusted her.

It killed her a little inside to think that she would have to betray him.

They continued forward through the fog. It grew darker, and a wind picked up, so that the mist lashed around their ankles, cold and wet, like weeds. With the wind came whispers, strains of music and laughter, as the sounds of other worlds blew back to them. It was so dark Corinthe couldn't see.

The wind crested to a howl; mist swirled around them like a blizzard. Had they at last reached the Crossroad?

“Luc!” she cried out, suddenly fearful that she had lost him.

Her voice sounded thin in the vast darkness. She reached for him, and he took her hand and squeezed.

“We'll be okay,” he said, and she knew he was trying to act brave for her sake. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

A gust bigger than all the rest swept through the blackness, forcing them apart. Corinthe felt her fingers—frigid, stiff, and clumsy—slip from Luc's grasp. Inch by inch, they slipped apart as the wind became a tornado, freezing Corinthe's insides, turning her to ice.

“I can't hold on!” she shouted to Luc.

“I've got you!” But he didn't. He tried to grab for an arm, but it was too late: inside she felt frozen, couldn't feel the beat of her own heart. It hurt to move, to breathe, even to think. As his fingers brushed her arm, she watched in horror while her skin began to shatter.

The last thing she heard was Luc shouting her name.

For several seconds, she did not exist. Not really. She had been blown apart, shattered into uncountable pieces. She couldn't feel her body. She was nothingness.

And then, slowly, a pulse came through her and she was able to move. She was shaking, but she was whole. She could feel her arms and legs again. The shattering … it had been an illusion, but she'd
felt
it. Like the universe itself, she was losing equilibrium, becoming both Corinthe and
not-
Corinthe at the same time.

One way or another, this was all going to end, and soon. No one got this many chances.

She fought to keep her balance as she took in her surroundings. The ground under her feet was trembling violently, and it was hard to stand. She was on the roof of a concrete building. It appeared to be the very rooftop where she'd first arrived in Humana so many years ago—and where she and Luc had faced off—but she couldn't tell if this was actually the same San Francisco or just another alternate world.

Not until she saw Luc's Giants cap lying in the corner where he'd dropped it.

This
was
San Francisco.

“Luc?” She turned around, searching for him. A low rumble started again, and the entire building shook. Corinthe heard screams and sirens from somewhere down on the street.

Where was Luc?

The roof was starting to splinter and crack. She had to get down to the street before the building collapsed. The red roof-access door was jammed, and it took all of Corinthe's waning strength to pull it open on its bent frame.

Another, harder aftershock rocked the building, and Corinthe slammed into the interior wall so hard it knocked her down several steps. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle as her foot twisted beneath her. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, and smoke started to fill the small space.

Earthquake. Had to be. She'd experienced several of them in San Francisco, but none this severe.

She stood and held on to the iron railing that ran the length of the steps, then put a little weight on her ankle to test it. It held. If she was careful, she could walk on it.

She gritted her teeth and took the steps one by one, hobbling the best she could. Her ankle didn't feel broken, but it hurt worse than the smoke burning her lungs and eyes. Limping and coughing, she pushed herself down the last few steps and shoved the heavy double doors open. She felt as if she'd stepped into one of the nightmares she'd heard humans describe, an awful vision of chaos.

Out on the street, people stumbled out of doors, pushing past her. A child with huge eyes glanced back at her, a tiny trickle of blood running down her temple. The mother jerked her around a corner before Corinthe could react. No one stopped to ask Corinthe if she needed help; most didn't even look at her.

She glanced around. Whole buildings had toppled, leaving piles of concrete and iron in the street. Power wires were down, sparking in puddles of liquid. Plumes of smoke billowed toward the sky, filling the air with a dusklike darkness.

This was her fault. She had disturbed the balance of the universe. All fate was intertwined; the universe was too tightly woven. By pulling on one strand, she had begun to unravel all of the others.

A radio crackled from a car that sat deserted on the street.

Confirmed 7.9.

Extensive devastation.

Multiple casualties.

Bruised people stumbled by, looking dazed. A child bawled in her mother's arms. A man was shouting into a cell phone, and a teenage girl was crying, sitting on the stoop of a house whose roof had collapsed.

The streets were congested, full of abandoned cars and rubble. Fire trucks and police cars wove around the debris, sirens wailing. Down the block, she could see forked tongues of fire licking from the windows of an apartment building.

Blindly, Corinthe began to hobble through the mess. Halfway across the next block, she tripped over something. A leg. It was protruding from underneath a large pile of bricks. There was no shoe on the foot, but Corinthe knew the body was a woman's; she could even make out the pink nail polish underneath the opaque stocking, the dainty toes.

Corinthe's stomach flipped. She thought she was going to be sick. Death had never affected her this way before, another indication that she was becoming more like them. It was wrong. The chaos was all wrong.