Page 41 of In Death’s Hands (The Threads of Fate #1)

I look around to find too many eyes on me.

Thalnus shows an impassive face while Atys, at his side, keeps looking between Nathan, me and Fenrick.

His face is similar to what mine would be if you asked me to solve an equation.

There are a few guards, many trying to pretend they’re not gawking at me but instead looking straight ahead as their duty seems to demand.

The only pair of eyes that I don’t feel on my skin is the only one I want.

Nathan is still fixated on a broken man kneeling in front of him.

Rage and violence simmer off his broad shoulders.

I still don’t understand why he feels so strongly for my plight.

Isn’t he breaking all kinds of rules by keeping me alive when all signs point to me needing to be very dead?

I pause. All signs but one, I remember.

“I’m not dead,” I say, cutting off Thalnus’ latest question to the bleeding brother.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone , turns to me this time. I glimpse Nathan’s approval before I focus on Fenrick, taking pleasure in his annoyed frown.

“Clearly,” he says, his voice raspy from all the yelling.

I take a step forward. “No, but that’s it.

Don’t you see?” No one seems to actually get it, I realise as I meet raised eyebrows from all directions.

“I’m not dead. If the Order would rectify itself by killing me, why aren’t I dead?

It doesn’t make sense.” I ignore Nathan’s growl as I fight to get that fire in me roaring again.

Turan and Nathan’s shadow still hold my hands but don’t move with me, letting me fight my own battle, it seems.

“ He interfered.” Fenrick nods to Nathan.

“But he works for Death. Who saved me. Surely Death knows what it’s doing, no?”

Fenrick looks to Nathan, and an incredulous laugh makes its way past his split lips.

My friend takes one step towards him and the man quiets.

“One would think so,” he replies, spitting blood on the white floor.

“But a lot has clearly gone wrong. And you said you’ve faced your death before us, so the Order is working to fix itself. ”

“But why is it failing?” I insist, painfully dragging everyone to my point.

“If the Order is this super-powerful universe-thing, and the Fates have planned all this, why am I right here, right now?” How come a simple human has managed to overcome something so big and powerful? “Wouldn’t they have planned this too?”

Brother Fenrick looks sick suddenly, and I don’t think it’s from his injuries. “We…” He swallows. “We cannot be sure.”

“Why?” I insist.

“The Fates have gone quiet.”

“How do you know?” Atys asks.

From what Nathan told me, they know the Fates are quiet.

They don’t know why, nor where they are.

All they know, from whatever inherent memory still lives inside them after whatever happened to them, is that they truly exist. And yet here is this brotherhood that claims to work for them.

A brotherhood made up of humans and other beings that don’t seem to be quite as human as Fenrick and me.

Fenrick stays silent, refusing to look at Atys, who looks entirely too serious for a man wearing a bright red sarong with white and blue flowers.

“You’ve talked to them?” I ask, releasing my friends’ hands to move to Nathan.

The tension emanating from him is like a magnet. I yearn to put my hand on his arm, to loosen the corded muscles shaking under the tight black fabric of his shirt. When I settle next to him, he takes a big breath that seems to go nowhere, as if he’s holding my scent in his lungs.

What a ridiculous thought.

I focus on Fenrick, whose eyes look like they’re following a tennis match, with their excessive back-and-forth between me and the man at my side.

At Fenrick’s silence, something violent crosses my mind.

I’m slightly shocked as I contemplate how to make him talk.

My life pouring coffee to strangers seems so far away.

Would I even be able to get back to it? Shame tightens my throat.

It’s an oily feeling, wondering how far you’re willing to go for something, and I’m relieved when Atys brings his dagger to Fenrick’s skin and saves me from getting an answer.

My exhale is shaky as I forcefully push my thoughts out of my head, all too willing to pretend that I never even once considered stomping on an already broken hand to get what I want.

Atys’ dagger glints in the light as it slices an arc in the air before meeting flesh.

I blink, and more blood is trickling out, pouring out of Fenrick’s body in tiny rivulets.

The colour is so bright, and so much darker in the light of the crystal chandelier illuminating the large room, that I’m mesmerised by it.

Something feels so… right about that blood pouring. A shiver runs down my spine.

This man is wrong. The thought is foreign as it clangs around in my head. Like a certainty. An absolute knowledge. My lips stretch slightly at the corners. He will get what’s coming for him. For the affront he committed. Him and others like him.

A strong hand on my back, Nathan’s, startles me. Goodness, what is wrong with me? Where did those horrible thoughts come from?

My eyes widen at the pool of blood at Fenrick’s knees. I swallow the bile that comes up my throat.

Atys is talking, and I vaguely hear him explain how the knife is embedded into some important part that will have the brother slowly dying.

A part of me wants to say that there is no part of the body that wouldn’t be important if a blade was inside it, but I keep my mouth shut.

I’m working so hard on shutting everything off, on locking my trembling muscles, that I’m sure if I open my mouth, everything will come pouring out.

Nathan’s hand tightens on my back, and I want to tell him not to show he cares, but I’m too grateful for his warmth to move away.

My ears stop ringing enough to hear Fenrick’s ragged breaths. He coughs, and more blood spills out of the wound at his side.

“Speak,” I say, expecting my voice to be this trembling, pathetic thing, but what comes out is strong. Fierce even. A voice that doesn’t seem to belong to me.

The man’s brown eyes are wide when they collide with mine. He closes them for a second, two, and when he reopens them, relief floods my system.

“The Great Betrayer is behind what happened to them,” Fenrick says as he jerks his chin to Nathan and Atys standing beside me.

Shock is a living entity grabbing the whole room in its embrace.

I can feel it stealing the oxygen around me, narrowing everyone’s focus down to one single man’s words.

“They are behind what happened to them , too.”

“The Fates,” I say. Not a question, because for a reason I cannot begin to comprehend, I already know.

He nods, then swallows. The act is obviously painful as he struggles to steady his breathing. “We’ve known. We’ve… tried. But even he has gone quiet.”

I take a step forward, my heart a war drum in my ears. “ Who? ”

“Thetlum,” he says, his voice breaking. Nathan shudders beside me and I hear a few others gasp.

“That name,” murmurs Nathan, shaking his head as if to clear it. When he looks at me, I see a battle in his eyes, like he’s pushing to lift some unknown veil.

“Do you remember him?” The question comes from Fenrick.

My friend nods. “How?”

“The Great Betrayer’s curse. It didn’t erase your memories. It hid them, deep inside all of you.”

“How do you know?” thunders Thalnus.

“ He told us. Decades ago, he found our brotherhood. Demanded protection.” He shakes his head.

“We have served the Order for centuries, fighting for the Fates. They would make their will known through one of the Nine and we would execute. Sometimes literally. But none have ever seen one of them in person. And he was so broken . I was young then, but I still remember it. It was like life had been siphoned away from his body, his soul. Barely a spark left. And now that spark is gone.”

“What does it mean ?” I ask, more frustrated than I’ve ever been.

“It means, girl, that we are the sole guardians of the only Fate left in this world. And that Fate is on the brink of death.”

“That isn’t possible,” Nathan says.

Fenrick looks sharply at Death’s assistant. “That is how it is.”

“No. The Fates are tied to this world. They can’t die.”

Thalnus turns to him. “What if this… Betrayer found a way?”

Nathan shakes his head. “You’re not listening. They cannot die. Their essence is fuelled by the Order. One doesn’t exist without the other. I’m not saying the world will die if they die. I’m saying they cannot be extinguished.”

We all turn to Fenrick once more. “Are you sure this man wasn’t lying?” I ask.

The brother laughs. “He is the He of the Fates.” I frown, but he carries on before I can ask. “He may not be able to die, but he isn’t alive either. He cannot fully be without the others.”

My heart aches for this man, this… entity I do not know. It’s a soul-deep cry, one that leaves me feeling even more hopeless than I was before. And my head hurts from all the information. “Where are the others?”

He shakes his head. “We do not know. We’ve been looking, but he only managed to tell us he escaped. That he had to leave his sibling behind, to get his sister back. That’s all we know. We’ve been guarding his body for over twenty years now, and nothing has changed.”

I have so many questions rushing around that I struggle to fully grab on to one.

An actual Fate was seen; that alone is incredible.

But that Fate escaped—escaped what? And he went to look for his sister?

So his sibling is still wherever Thetlum was kept?

And who was he kept by? This Great Betrayer? How?

My head hurts.

I open my mouth a few times, trying to voice at least one of these questions, and I realise that I’m not the only one reeling at what Fenrick has said.

“Why not come to us?” asks Turan gently from behind me. And she’s right. Why not get the help of beings so powerful they could surely destroy whoever has done these things?

“Because the Great Betrayer is among you,” rasps Fenrick into the deadly silence.