Page 25

Atropos feels different, moves different. There is a stealthiness to her lithe actions which calls a hum of awareness to the very bones beneath my skin. It banishes the illusion of gentle love I’d felt in the power of presence that poured from Clotho and Lachesis.

Atropos is the inevitable. She is death.

She decides the end and cuts the cord. Her shears have spread tails of fear and devastation throughout myth and legend for eons.

When her shifting age settles, she is an old woman. A crone.

And yet there is still beauty that clings to her, much like the beauty which clings to an ancient gem. It will always sparkle under the light of the moon, even if the gold that surrounds it is tarnished in time.

She has black hair and black eyes.

Together, they are the three Fates. The Moirai.

They are the oracles of the universe. They are law, absolute.

They are stunning and unsettling.

They would look entirely human—humanoid bodies, ears, eyes, and noses—but they’re missing their mouths.

Where there would be lips, there is nothing. Simply skin. It is as though no mouth has ever been.

They all look to me and Hades at once. Atropos sets her hands on the cauldron, and onyx and gold race to settle beneath her palms. The floor beneath our feet rattles a violent quake that pushes through the heart of the mountain. From the depths of the cauldron, two souls rise.

They are colorless.

One would think white would be colorless, but it isn't. There is color in white.

These souls are unlike any other in the cauldron. They glow without substance, without being.

They have not yet been formed, I realize, as Clotho raises her hands to the ceiling. Tipping her head back, her blind eyes wide, she begins to spool from the gold of the stars the veryThreads of Fate.

She pulls, and pulls, and pulls, and finally, when the last of the thread falls into her hands, she trains those cloudy eyes on me and Hades.

Chapter

Eleven

Persephone

“Your daughters,”three voices, always together, speak as one. They are not separate, the Fates. Though they possess separate bodies, they are one consciousness.

It is a consciousness that,I realize with a chill, is tapped into something far higherthan we have dared to tap.

Even as they speak in my mind, there is a projection to their voice that tells me Hades hears them just as clearly.

He stiffens around me, his hands curling into fists at my belly. The black granite of his flesh tightens and the magma that runs in his veins flows faster. A low and ominous sound begins as a rattle in his chest. I sink deeper into him.

The Moirai speak again, all now looking at us even as those threads of gold twist gently through Clotho’s lithe fingers. Even as Clotho does not technically see through the turbulent clouds that tumble in her eyes.“The goal is shared consciousness.”

What? I thought we were speaking of our daughters.

“The highest power comes not from guarding secrets and assets, but from a collective joining of souls which stems from one consciousness. This is the true path to power.”

“Then why are we so divided?”

“This must begin with the bonding of soul mates.”

I scoff. “This sounds like a conversation you should be having with Zeus.”