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She was still for a long while, and a part of me wished I knew what was going through her head. Don’t ask, Kastroff.

Instead, I gave her a moment of privacy, and observed the historic—horrific—Lumin Temple. With the ethereal glow of golden rays and stained glass, it was beautiful—if I didn’t know what had occurred inside years ago. What might still happen at the hands of the temple masters.

The Starsearcher crest adorned the dome—a circle of eleven stars with a gap where a twelfth used to be—as it did every flag in this city.

“For the Fates,” I whispered, gesturing to a pennant draping above the temple wall.

Vale’s gaze swiveled toward me. “The stars are the eleven existing. The gap is the lost Fate.”

The silken symbol wavered in the breeze. I studied the wall again, the stone etched with depictions of the eleven existing fates, the twelfth carved away, like a great beast’s claws had gouged it out.

Dragging a hand along the rough surface, I walked a few feet and found the one I was looking for. There weren’t names—the Fates’ names were only given to the Starsearchers—but I recognized the rendition.

“Cruelty and Adoration,” I muttered.

Vale’s breath hitched. “You remember?” she asked.

I looked at her, saying firmly, “I remember everything.”

“Cruelty and Adoration,” Vale said wistfully as we strolled through the quiet back alleys of Damenal.

My brows shot up.

“What?” She laughed, and the sound made my throat dry out.

I licked my lips. “A bit of a juxtaposition.”

“All the Fates are,” she explained. Her hand brushed mine as she turned to study a shop window full of precious gems, and my heart stuttered like I was thirteen years old again.

We were in one of the wealthiest parts of the city—not because I was trying to impress her, but because in the month since she’d arrived in Damenal, it was one of the few we had yet to explore. And truthfully, the silence was relaxing. The sound of her voice melodic as we wandered, a break from the strategy meetings we were in all day.

“All the Fates are counters to themselves?” I asked, studying the rings catching the setting sun in their velvet boxes. Sapphires, emeralds, rubies—even an extravagant cluster of pearls that complemented the single opal Vale always wore, the silver tarnished.

“All magic in this world and all others requires a balance, Cypherion,” she explained. “The Fates are beings of magic—they are no exception.”

“So, Cruelty and Adoration is the Fate that you’re aligned with?”

Vale kept her eyes trained on the glass, nodding. “She passes me such powerful readings.”

“And they center around those two things?”

“Those, and many more. Always connected in one way or another.”

“How?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Adoration comes in many forms.” Her eyes turned up to mine. “It can be love, passion, poetry.” My heart raced at the intensity of her stare. “And cruelty…well, can’t cruelty be a consequence of all those things, as well? They go hand in hand, a spectrum stretching between them. And every reading the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration passes to me falls along that spectrum.”

The darkness Titus read in Ophelia’s future. That could have been cruelty. One we remained blind to, though Vale was trying every day to decipher what the chancellor’s reading meant.

“And these spectrums are all…various states of being?” I clarified.

“Some are. Fate of Chaos, Fate of Wrath, it goes on.” Vale pushed away from the glass. Taking a few steps into the alley, she drew a circle in the air. “Think of the Fates as a sphere. They orbit like true stars, three-dimensionally rotating around us at all times. And in the center, are the Starsearchers.” She pretended to draw a line from the perimeter to the middle of that circle. “We conduct sessions here on Ambrisk, and they stretch out to us, burning in the wake of stars falling from the sky.”

She dropped her arms. “That’s what it looks like, at least. The images I’m shown appear in the trails of starfire burning in their wake.”

“You explain it beautifully,” I commented. I could listen to her talk about her magic for days.

She smiled softly, ducking her head. “It’s a beautiful part of my life.”