Page 76

EVE

The world tilted. It threw me sideways. Not in some poetic, slow-motion kind of way. This was violent. A full-body lurch, like gravity had been rewritten, and my lungs forgot how to work.

She sent us to find you.

I was frozen, listening to the pounding of my heart in my ears like it was a countdown to self-destruction. Every sound turned to static—until all I could hear was his voice again.

You’re the only one.

I couldn’t accept that. Couldn’t accept that my life was boiling down to one impossible task.

Stop Pathos.

I felt my chest tightening as the voices continued to climb, melding together in anger and betrayal, in disbelief and denial.

“Everybody, shut up!” I shouted, rising to my feet. I hadn’t expected my outburst to work, but sure enough, the room settled into a tense quiet.

I turned to Atlas, who looked green with nausea.

“I’m not your fucking chosen one, OK?” I said breathlessly. “I don’t even know who this Pathos guy is, and you’re telling me I’m supposed to what? Kill him? Absolutely not.”

“Eve—“

“No! You shut up and listen to me!” I could feel myself unraveling, but I was powerless to stop it. “I don’t know what I’m doing. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

Magic flared instinctively, building and growing just under my skin until I thought I might explode. My hands were glowing. Burning. Like my blood had turned to kerosene.

Then Xander stepped up behind me, his hands wrapping around me and clasping my own and dousing the flames climbing up my arms.

But his ice did little to calm the storm brewing inside of me.

Orion stepped in front of me, his hands cradling my burning cheeks as he dragged my eyes up to meet his.

“Eve, everything is going to be OK—“

“No, Orion. None of this is OK. Atlas is wrong. I’m not the person he’s been looking for.”

“I know it’s terrifying,” he said, his voice too steady for the look in his eyes. “But you’re not alone. You’ve never been.”

“For fucks sake, Orion!” Ragnar’s voice boomed, cutting his brother off.

We all turned to him, finding a man barely clinging on.

Every vein in his body was lit up as he repressed the explosive magic beneath his skin, leaving his muscles coiled and ready to burst from beneath his checkered shirt.

“Your blind fucking faith is going to get us all fucking killed!”

“Shut your mouth, Ragnar,” Orion spat back.

“No, you shut up! She was all I had left—she was my everything, but you’re all like it meant nothing!

” He spun to Atlas, gesticulating wildly.

“And now you’re telling me she lied to me?

That she kept this from all of us? You’re telling me you fucking knew what she was planning and you let it happen anyway? ”

“Ragnar—“

“No! You don’t get to talk to me, Xander. It was obvious the whole time that you knew something, but I want to hear it from him. How much did you fucking know, Atlas?”

He looked devastated, and I felt like my heart was breaking for him. The sight was enough to calm the fire building beneath my skin until it was nothing more than embers that seemed like they were burning on his behalf.

Atlas stepped forward, each movement slow and deliberate, like he was approaching a wild animal.

“Ragnar, you need to calm down—”

“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! She’s dead, Atlas. She died for this and you fucking kept it from me!”

Then Ragnar finally broke. Sobs racked his body, and Atlas grabbed him, regardless of the heat pouring from his skin. He held him tight, his forehead pressed to his.

“Brother, I need you to listen to me. This is no one’s fault—“

Ragnar shoved Atlas away so hard that he collided with the wall. I flinched as the others gathered tighter around me. I held my breath but Ragnar was breathing hard, sucking air into his lungs like he’d been suffocating.

Atlas pulled himself upright. The pain on his usually stoic face was not a result of injury. He looked like his heart was breaking just as much as mine was.

“I’m done.”

Ragnar exhaled like he was letting go of everything. I understood him in that moment—how much he’d loved the woman he’d lost, and how it felt like he was losing his brothers too. His shoulders sagged as he turned away from us without a single glance.

Xander shifted next, not leaving, just stepping back at the same time that Orion dropped his hands.

But I couldn’t look away from Atlas. He looked like the world had just ended, like Ragnar had taken the air from the room, leaving the rest of us dizzy and gasping.

I stumbled back to the armchair, dropped into it without grace, and buried my face in my hands.

This whole thing was a disaster.

And I couldn’t help but feel like it was all my fault.

I dragged my hands down my face and looked up at Atlas, desperate for something—anything. A plan. A way out.

But the grief I’d seen in his eyes was gone, hidden beneath a mask so thick I was surprised he could still breathe under it.

Then he cleared his throat.

“This wasn’t what I intended to happen. I knew I should have told you all sooner, but…

” he gulped, shaking his head like he was repositioning to hide the small crack in his mask.

“Columba found out there was another Phoenix on Titan. Given what was happening with the daema, we thought it was smart to keep it a secret. He was hunting her, and we couldn’t risk confirming the rumors that were already circulating, so we hid the child. ”

I still couldn’t wrap my head around it, that I was from Titan, that they had known about me long before I’d known who they were.

“Pathos arrived in the capital shortly after. It was like hell on earth. His army tore through the city looking for Columba, trying to get to her magic. He would have stopped at nothing to take that power for himself and…”

My heart jumped to my throat as Atlas tried to hide his flinching, like the memories were too painful to recall.

“What happened?” Orion stepped closer to his brother, his own anger placed to one side as he looked to him for answers.

Atlas looked at each man, a faint apology lingering behind the storm in his eyes.

“We found the child’s mother. Mutilated by hell hounds.”

The blood in my body ran cold.

Then something in my brain flipped.

If she died… then who raised me?

My thoughts stumbled over themselves like they were trying to shield me from the truth.

I shook my head, lips parting around the only thing I could cling to. “Wait—no. She didn’t die. I have a mom. She left, yeah, but she isn’t dead.”

“The woman who raised you wasn’t your mother, Eve. She was your aunt. Melandra.”

“No,” I whispered. But I could already feel the memory working backward through time—her silences, her avoidance, the way she never talked about my father, the way she’d always looked at me like I wasn’t quite hers.

“Columba told Melandra to run,” Atlas said, continuing like I hadn’t spoken. “She did it to keep you safe. To hide you until you were old enough. That was why Columba sent us here before she closed the Divide. She didn’t trap us here—she was protecting you from Pathos. Giving us time to find you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

The silence pressed in—tight, unbearable.

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this?” Orion broke the silence, his voice full of accusation. “If you knew she was here this whole time, why not tell us?”

Atlas met Orion’s stare but didn’t flinch. “Because I didn’t know what Columba planned. Not at first.”

His voice cracked just enough to betray him.

“I knew she was hiding the Phoenix, but I thought I’d have more time. I thought we’d find her, bring her back to Titan, but then… she was gone. Columba was dead. The Divide was sealed. And we were stranded here.”

He turned slightly, his hands flexing at his sides like he was forcing the next words out.

“I thought I could find the child on my own. This was my mission, and I know I should have said something, but then I found Melandra. Seven years after the Divide had been sealed. She told me the child didn’t survive the crossing. By then… it felt too late.”

“You thought she was dead,” Orion said quietly.

Atlas’s mouth tightened. “I couldn’t give you hope. Not when I didn’t have any left.”

Names, places, memories that weren’t mine—they all blurred together. I didn’t know what hurt more—that she’d kept this from me… or that somewhere, deep down, everything Atlas said was starting to make sense.

But if all of this was true…

“If no one knew about me,” I said, my voice tight, “why are the daema hunting me?”

Orion let out a low breath. “Good fucking question.”

“I don’t know,” Atlas admitted. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but there’s no clear answer. Even Orion finding you was pure coincidence.”

“Or cosmic intervention,” Xander muttered, almost to himself.

I looked at him like he’d just kicked me in the ribs. Was he serious?

Fate. He was trying to say this was fate.

Fate wasn’t real. Fate was just the lie people told themselves when they needed to believe their suffering had meaning. It wasn’t fate that got my mother killed. It wasn’t fate that left me bleeding in the dirt or dragged me into nightmares I didn’t ask for.

Fate implied purpose.

Like this was all meant to happen.

Like I didn’t have a choice.

My gaze settled on Orion, who’d been there from the beginning. Who looked at me like I mattered long before I even knew why.

I hated the idea that the universe might’ve pushed us together. That I hadn’t chosen him. That none of this was mine to own.

“No,” I said, finally finding my voice. “I don’t care what you all believe. I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t choose this—and now you’re trying to suggest that it was never in my control to begin with?”

Orion turned to me, his expression tight, almost panicked, like he could see the thread of me starting to fray and didn’t know how to catch it in time.

“Eve, that’s not—”

“I’m not your chosen one,” I stood abruptly, the chair scraping behind me. “This is not fate. This is not my life, and I refuse to accept that it is.”

I didn’t wait for their replies. I walked out—not because I wanted space, but because if I stayed, I’d start screaming.

This wasn’t my story. Fate didn’t get a fucking say.