Page 86 of Ruled By Fate

“Yes, but—”

“Not to mention, I think we’ve established that’s one powerful celestial artifact you’ve got around your neck. We don’t understand it, and we don’t know the limits of its capabilities.”

She stopped her pacing and whirled in a rage, pendant in hand. “It’s changing me, Cameron. Turning me into something I’m not.”

He was quiet for a moment before replying. “What if it’s turning you into something you are?”

“Don’t give me the destiny speech. I’m being mutated somehow. And the worst part is, I don’t have any say in the matter. Because if I take this thing off my neck…” She stomped her foot in childlike fury, hands balled at her sides in fists. “This is not what I want, Cameron. This is not what I would choose for myself.”

“Brianna—”

“No! Don’t try to make this less than it is, and don’t try to make it better.”

“Brianna—”

“You have no idea how this feels. No idea how trapped I feel at this moment. No idea—”

“Brianna!”

“What?”

It was only then she saw him staring, horrified, at her feet. It was only then she saw that she’d stomped a deep crack straight through her living room floor.

Oh, my God…

She turned and followed the fissure as it slowly spread. It traced to the fireplace and, with a low, ominous thump, started splitting the stones apart. One after another. Cracks and dust.

Cameron was there in a flash, placing a glowing hand on the crack and murmuring something profound and unintelligible. The crack faded slightly before vanishing all at once.

He looked up at her, breathing hard. “Brianna, I say this with no intention whatsoever of invalidating your feelings: perhaps there’s a way for you to experience these emotions that doesn’t break your house.”

? ? ?

Brie took a bath. It was what she did whenever things felt overwhelming. She’d done it ever since she could remember.

When she was five and had to come home early from a classmate’s birthday party because the excitement had been too much, and she ended up getting frosting on her party dress, the first thing her mom did was run a bubble bath and pop her in the tub.

In third grade, when Bobby Mackavoy pretended he was going to kiss her behind the merry-go-round but held up a frog instead, she ran right home after school and got into the tub.

After her mother’s funeral, she spent two days in the bath.

She didn’t eat or drink. She’d replenish the hot water when it ran cold. Sherry got her a toddler floatie to hold her head up when she had to sleep and stayed awake to make sure she didn’t slip and drown. Her father eventually dragged her out with a strange man she’d come to know as Dr. Rogers.

Her last memory of her old apartment, her old life, was in the tub — granted, it wasn’t the most relaxing experience — before she’d tried to move here to Virginia and start fresh.

What a fool’s errand that turned out to be.

Just as she had that last night in her old apartment, she sank beneath the water and let the pendant float up before her eyes. It glowed softly in the fluorescence, hovering with strange precision in front of her face like it was something alive. She grabbed it between two fingers and twisted it back and forth, looking for something, anything, as though she could find a clue, a mark she’d never seen before in all her years of faithfully wearing it around her neck.

Like a millstone.

She let go and watched it drift back down to her chest, to her scar. Well, to what used to be a scar. She could barely see it anymore. She gritted her teeth together so hard her jaw hurt, and her hands balled up into fists.

It’s erasing it.

It’s erasing who I used to be — turning me into something else, something new.

She surfaced angrily, splashing water out of the tub.

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