Page 251 of Of Sins and Sacrifice

The eye stops. A web of tangled threads shines so brightly, it’s almost blinding. Registering the surroundings, I flash myself there, absorbing the energy of the eye within my palms.

Here it is. My fate.

Nine blinding threads of fate, and one of which I must cut.

Wyn might not have said it explicitly, but after some deliberation it is clear she meant my love thread. Since Mine is mortal and our energies signatures differ so much, it is impossible that he might ever be my fated love.

A bitter taste assails me as I think of another male who might have a claim on me. Yet it’s also the opposite that worries me. If at some point I stumble upon that male fated for me and the true mating corrupts my feelings to the point that I forget Mine.

Unacceptable.

That can never happen.

There can never be anyone else for me. Now or ever.

I turn my attention to the bright threads and study them intently. Some of them have different colored hues, ranging from pure white to light blue, green, red, pink, orange, purple, yellow, and black. The pure white and black ones I assume to be the life and death ones respectively.

But the others… Which one is the love thread?

THIRTY-SIX

Think,Minnie, think.What else had Wyn said?

Blood will tell.

Does that mean red? Red like blood?

I glance at the reddish thread, but then there’s also the pink one and depending on the angle the light hits, the first one becomes more pink and the second one more red.

Fantastic. How in the Source can I tell them apart—if red is even the one I should be cutting.

I should go back and ask Lord Groyo to tell me which one to cut. But as I glance at my timer, I realize I’m rapidly running out of time, and I need to spare at least a minute to make sure Groyo forgets all about our interaction today.

With no other choice but to gamble, I take a deep breath and materialize my ice dagger. The blade hovers between the pink and red threads, which shift from one color to the other almost in a hypnotizing manner.

I conjure up Mine’s face and the warmth of his body against mine, and as I glance again at the threads, I see a stronger flicker of red.

I cut.

The snap is soundless. At first, the thread breaks in two. But within moments, those half-threads twist and turn in the air before heading straight to me. I stumble back, accidentally hitting some other threads, but I’m not too quick to react as the shimmery half-threads hit me in the chest simultaneously in the same place, just above my heart.

My breath is knocked out of my body and I fall to my knees, wheezing as I struggle for air.

The pain is sharp and lingering.

I press my palm against my chest and a tingling sensation starts spreading all over my body.

Images flash before my eyes, swift and relentless, but I can’t make sense of any of them. There’s only a sense of dread developing deep inside my chest. Panic rises within me until I’m a chaotic mess of fear and anxiety.

A deep breath, and it’s gone.

I exhale slowly, still reeling from the attack. The thread I’d cut is gone, and so are the other tiny connections tying it to the other threads.

I struggle to get to my feet, but I sway from side to side, barely able to get my bearings together.

Something else shimmers behind me, a foreign thread that I’d bumped into and that now coils around my arm in a suffocating vise.

I look around, but I cannot detect its origin. It’s not like the others, clustered together and intertwined with each other.

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