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“There’s no way you could have known,” he said, stepping alongside me. He looked up to the apples, pointing at them as I watched with a hollow in my heart. “The apples are what you need to continue on, but I have a price.”

My heart dropped into my throat, thinking that after all of this, the way I’d tried so hard, it would be for nothing. I swallowed. “What’s your price?”

He turned to me more fully, leveling me with the full weight of his stare. “Promise me you won’t forget. Promise me you’ll make our deaths matter,” he said, the words drawing a strangled sob from me.

That was a price I could pay. A cost I would have accepted even without his request. He may not have agreed with the way I would make them matter in the end, given his hatred for the Fae of Alfheimr, but ridding the world of Mab would save humans as well. “I promise,” I said, letting him hoist me into his arms.

“Then I forgive you,” he said, our faces too close as he murmured the words. The affection there felt genuine, and I wondered if I’d missed it in life. If I’d misinterpreted our agreement as being mutually beneficial or if he truly had been twisted in the river. I hoped that whatever the case may have been, this brought him peace. I hopedforgiveness was the path to moving on, to freedom from Tartarus. He didn’t deserve to suffer here for eternity.

He held me higher, letting me pluck the apples from the tree. The moment the final apple was freed from the branch, cradled in my hands, I felt like I was suspended in midair. Looking down to where Loris had held me, I watched him disappear. His arms no longer supported me, billowing away like a whisper on the wind.

“I promise,” I repeated, watching his face twist with fear. Whatever came next for him, he was going into the unknown just like I was. There was no certainty in life or in death, only the unexpected.

He faded away as if he’d never really been here at all, leaving me floating in darkness as the wails of mourning filled my ears once more. They stayed with me, even as I crawled my way onto the riverbank, a distant howling in my ears.

A voice that I would never forget.

SIXTY

ESTRELLA

We continued on in a hurry, moving in silence as I tried to escape the wailing in my ears. We walked until we reached our next destination, the next place where we would find safety to rest for the night.

Even if the trials were behind me, Tartarus still wasn’t safe for me.

The village before us was enormous, a city the likes of which I’d never seen in its prime. But whereas I imagined the cities in Nothrek had once been filled with towering structures and vertical buildings meant to optimize the limitations of the space to house its people, this village was filled with single-story dwellings.

The Temple of the Fates was carved into the cliffside, a gleaming thing of white marble. The structure was too large for the village surrounding it, the doorway alone feeling tall enough that I could stand on top of Caldris’s shoulders five times over and still never even touch the top of the doorway. Interspersed with the more permanent homes that had been crafted out of any manner of natural objectsthat could be found in the surrounding landscape: wood, straw, mud, clay, there were tents made from rough fabric, linens swaying in the wind that tore through the encampment.

In some cases, the tents appeared larger than the homes themselves, entire households crammed into them to sleep together. A child ran through the settlement, her hair blowing behind her as she raced through the space. The giggle she emitted was one of pure joy in spite of the temporary housing that surrounded us, and she met a friend on the other side of the path before they raced off together.

“Who are these people?” I asked, turning to Medusa. The woman I logically knew was my mother, but had not yet quite managed to reconcile that way in my head, smiled at me wistfully.

“They’re waiting for the Fates to call them into the temple,” she said, nodding her head forward. I followed her gaze to the way they worked together in the center of the settlement, a miniature temple emerging from behind the tents and homes as we approached. “Some of them have been waiting for longer than you have existed, Estrella. Some of them will never leave this place or feel the grace of the Fates upon them. They would tell you to be thankful for their favor, that they’ve deigned to shine their golden light upon you and guide you through your destiny.”

We approached the smaller temple, the words scrawled above the door making my steps falter. I tripped over my own feet, as I stared up at the language written in the Old Tongue. They were a reminder of the wolves at my back, of everything my bond with Fenrir symbolized and reminded me of what I had always been destined to be. The choice that had been torn from me before I’d even been born, staring me straight in the face as I studied the temple that these people had clearly built their village around.

But they’d been here longer than I’d existed…

Teampal a’le Tempestrua Moirai.

Temple of the Child of Fate.

“How long has this been here? Who came before me that would lay claim to those words?” I asked, taking the first step up to the temple doors. There were only a dozen of them compared to the never-ending cascade of steps on the temple of the Fates themselves, but Medusa did not move to follow. Instead, Caldris and I stood alone on the white marble, all those who had traveled with us remaining behind. The message was clear, this place, this temple, was for me and me alone. But my bond with my mate pulsed brighter than ever, the magic seeming to recognize that he belonged with me in this.

I was grateful for it, knowing that the other temple would not welcome him. I wanted to cling to him for every moment I could, wanted to remember what it was to have him beside me when the time so quickly approached where I would have to say goodbye once again. Even if for just a while, being separated from him at all was almost too much for me to bear.

“The temple has stood in the shadow of the Fates since the dawn of time,” Medusa said, looking to the temple at her back where it was carved into the mountain. “They have known of your existence since they drew their first breath. They have seen your destiny since the first thread was spun. They created your father from the darkness, not so thathemight be born, but so that one day, you would be.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to wrap my mind around the reality of that. The implications of what it meant would never be something I could understand, not with the idea that spanned centuries and time. Not with the understanding that this had all been written in a time that I could not even begin to fathom.

There was a distinct, burning question in my gut. One that I needed the answer to but didn’t think anyone but the Fates could give me, and whether or not they would offer the answer was another question.

“Ask it, Estrella. Whatever question you have, ask it of me, and I will do my best to answer,” Medusa said, holding my weighted stare.

Caldris stepped up behind me, pressing his chest into my spine and offering me his strength. I knew my breathing was ragged, the words feeling torn from the depths of my soul. Like some part of me knew the answer already, knew that it would forever change me and my outlook on what I would do with my life.

“Why?” I asked, the single word sitting between our group so heavily. It was such a simple question, open and closed all at once, and yet…