Page 100 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

“No,” I said, scoffing as I considered how I could make them understand. If it was true that they did not understand human feelings and things such as love, then how could a choice that was purely rooted in emotion ever make sense to a being like that? And what business did a being with no concept of love have determining the fates of men? “I do not want either of those things. I want to live my life in peace and not be consumed by the knowledge that my decisions carry the weight of the world. I don’t want to live for an eternity knowing that I could make a difference, and wondering if it will be for the betterment of man or the downfall of everything I love. I want to be no one and nothing in the grand scheme of this world, and when I die, I want my memory to fade into obscurity. So if that isn’t the answer you wanted, if it does not serve your purpose or make me worthy, then just kill me now. I tire of these fucking games that are never-ending. I am worthy or I’m not. Make your choice already, because I have made mine.”

Atropos grinned, handing back the bag I had given to her. “The trials were never meant for us, Estrella Barlowe. Our choice was made so many centuries ago that they have always been irrelevant to us and the knowledge we have. These were the events that were necessary for you to be in the position to make the choices that aligned with the path we chose. These trials were so that you could come to understand your own worth and the weight of that worth on the world,” she said.

“You mean they were your manipulations to get me here, because I did not want to come here on my own. Without those trials, I would not be the woman you need me to be for whatever reason.You did what was necessary to serve your purpose and get me here, but it was never about what I needed to discover. Do not frame it as such when you could not even begin to understand the damage you have done. You have spent so long manipulating these fucking threads like we are all puppets on a string, and you’ve forgotten that we are real people. That we want things you will never understand. We love and we hurt and we feel the pain you cause us for your sick amusement.” I paused, waiting for an answer I knew I would not get. They would not feel sorry for the things they’d done, for the lives they’d ruined.

“You do not even begin to understand how deep our manipulations go, Estrella Barlowe,” Clotho said, her face shifting and morphing as I watched. Her skin knitted back together on the rotten side, her cheeks filling in as her features shifted around into a magical glamour that became far too familiar. My anger dissipated, my lungs sagging as I expelled the air from them in surprise.

Macha stood before me, her face twisted into a sad sort of smile as her sisters shifted at her sides. Where Lachesis had stood was Badb, her raven hair gleaming. Where there had once been Atropos, there was Nemain, her throat healed from the damage they’d let me believe Khaos had caused.

It was Badb who finally spoke as my jaw clenched, fighting back the sting of betrayal in my throat. “I warned you that even we had our own reasons for aiding you, Child of Fate,” she said, acting as if it were my fault that I’d come to care for the three women who had served as my guide. Their distance after Medusa came made more sense now, if she did not know the truth of the Morrigan’s identity, they probably wanted to keep it that way.

“And what were yours?” I asked, forcing myself to push through the hurt to get the answers I needed.

“Curiosity,” Nemain said, and her voice sounded so strange after so much time spent in silence. I’d barely gotten to hear her speak before her voice had gone, and now here she stood, speaking as if it had never happened at all. “We were impatient to meet you.”

“You told me the Fates appeared to me because something shifted, but you’d been there all along. You didn’t need to make yourself known. Why bother?” I asked, hating the need to understand.

“It would have been expected of us. You stole your power back from Tartarus and chose to stay anyway. You chose forgiveness over hatred, and that is not a trait we would expect from any of the Primordials. To not appear to you would only have raised suspicionsto Medusa, and we were not ready to reveal ourselves yet,” Macha said, her face twisting as if she felt the tiniest sliver of guilt for their deception.

It wasn’t enough.

“You are my reason. You are why I will never want the power you have. Because I willneverallow myself to become like you.”

“You are far more like us than you could possibly understand, Tempest. That is why you are here, about to enter the Cradle when we grant no access to others of your lineage. We are not your reckoning, Estrella,” Lachesis said, her voice tinted with something dark and almost angry. It never struck the point of feeling like emotion, but the window behind me opened to the Cradle, the Fates pressing closer to force me to take a step back toward it if I wanted to keep my distance from the monsters approaching.

Clotho finally opened her mouth again, her lips tipped up into an arrogant smirk as she watched my face fall. As one they reached up, touching a hand to my chest and that knot of thread there. They pushed, shoving me back through the open window so that I staggered over the edge and my feet touched the grass of the Cradle. I stared at the Fates in shock, realizing that they’d granted me passage. But it was Clotho’s last words that hung in the air as the glass rebuilt, shards snapping together to seal the temple off once more. “You are ours.”

SIXTY-SIX

ESTRELLA

I walked down the hillside, making my way into the valley that spread before me. Primordials stepped from the trees, emerging into the path that I walked so that they too could stare at me. The weight of those gazes upon my skin felt like the heat of a thousand suns, a judgment when I’d hoped the trials were done.

But the sinking feeling Clotho’s words left in my gut, made me wonder if maybe my trials had only just begun. Golden eyes studied me, from each and every corner of the Cradle, forming a line along the path to welcome me. By the time I finally reached Khaos and Medusa, I felt that sinking pit inside of me open into an eternal well—the depths of which I could not feel.What was this?

Khaos stepped forward, the harshness I’d come to know gone from his face. “Welcome home, daughter,” he said, closing the last distance between us. I backed away from him as his hands came to touch my face, to cradle it in a moment of intimacy he had notearned. His lips pressed together, a swallow working through his throat at my rejection. “You’re angry with me.”

“You stood there, and you watched me suffer. You never once tried to help me; you never once intervened,” I snapped, turning to look at where Medusa was cuddled into his side. She was quiet in the face of this argument, not bothering to offer any help to the father I’d never asked for. She didn’t need to help him understand, and for once, I appreciated that there was no one to help me communicate my pain.

I wanted him to hear it from me. I wanted him to hurt the way I had.

“Not all of us are as impervious to the influence of the Fates as you are, Estrella. I did what I could, when I could, without compromising your success. It was imperative that you make it here—to this place. In this moment, as you are. Had I stepped in and helped you, you never would have known what it is to stand alone. You would have never learned to trust in your own strength, and the strength of your resolve. You, and you alone, can defy them, Estrella. You and you alone can fix what we have wrought, but in order to do that, first you must kill Mab and rid the world of her stain. That is what is foretold, that is what will bring the turning of the tides,” Khaos said, his hands finally dropping to his sides as he realized I would not allow the embrace he sought.

“She is your daughter, just as I am. How can you speak of her death and not care what that means?” I asked, his impassiveness regarding Mab only confirming what I’d already suspected.

Whatever Khaos was capable of, it wasn’t the kind of love I related to. I could never condemn my daughter in that way.

“Any part of Mab that was my daughter has long since been erased. The crown she wears, the crown we fashioned foryouat the insistence of the Fates, has cursed her beyond recognition. We made it so that only the child we had together could wear it without consequence. I never imagined it would be stolen or used in this way. I never thought someone would tolerate the weight of it at all, but Mab is half me, and she connected to it just enough to gain power from it, but it did not save her from the madness it causes, only delayed it. It is only a matter of time before she slaughters everyone in her path,” Khaos answered.

“You are the Primordial of chaos. Why not stop her yourself?” I asked, the words a condemnation. All the suffering he could have ended if he’d only just taken responsibility for what he caused.

“The Fates condemned us all to live out our days in the Cradle,” he said, stepping forward again. He ignored my attempt to jerk back, finally laying his palms on my cheeks. His eyes closed at the contact, a buzz of familiar energy humming through me where he touched. “We did not willingly choose to leave our children. We did not willingly abandon the only one we were capable of caring for. You believe this to be a prison where Mab sends her enemies, where the Gods and the Primordials drag those who’ve wronged them, but it was our prison first. Our dungeon that we cannot escape. We will never walk the earth so long as the Fates control us all.”

“All things must die, Estrella,” Medusa echoed, her words from the night before tickling at the back of my mind.

I was their reckoning, and they were the jailors.

Khaos turned me to face the Primordials who watched us, laying his hands atop my shoulders. “They do not watch because you’re a curiosity. They watch you because you are the only one that can free them from this pit. They watch you because you are our savior,” he said, forcing me to watch as the Primordials bowed their heads to the ground beside the path where I’d walked.

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