Page 98 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

The inside of the Temple of the Fates was similar to the outside, the lowest level a sprawling entryway filled with marble columns and detailed carvings. I stepped into the marble, feeling out of place in my shocking golden dress that was so vibrant compared to the white that surrounded me. But as we walked farther toward the opposite end of the room, a splash of color appeared on the backdrop.

The tapestries that hung from ceiling to the floor were larger than any I’d ever seen, larger than anything that was practical to create or even use. The colors were a myriad, splashes of every color of the rainbow mingling with the delicate golden thread that I recognized intimately.

I stepped away from Medusa where she lingered in the center of the room, drawn to the colors and the way the gold was woven into them. A part of the fabric of life but not the entirety of it, the threadwas a statement of absolutes in a world of color. It was life or death in a sea of possibilities.

The bottom right of the most recent tapestry was of a woman who looked too similar to the statue in the temple, the back of my head all I could see as she studied the tapestries before her. I spun to look at Medusa, shock written into the lines of my face. All around me more tapestries descended, falling from the ceiling to line the columns and the walls.

My face peered back at me in each and every one, something I recognized even in my differences. “Is this me?” I asked, stepping away from the tapestry that had first called to me. To the right of it was the woman I’d recognized so immediately, the me of my first life.

Aella stood with Brann at her side, his figure never changing in his time that we’d spent with the rebellion. He hadn’t needed to hide who he was or what I was, instead focusing on teaching me the ways of touching magic even when it did not exist in Nothrek, purely for the sake of readying me for the day the Veil fell.

“They all are. These are your story, Estrella. All the threads and the lives that led you to this moment,” Medusa answered, but I studied the gathering of tapestries that seemed to expand with each passing moment. They hung in layers that I felt like I could spend an eternity walking through, learning the ways of my lives and the past that I could not grasp in my mind on my own.

These versions of me were strangers, and yet I recognized them all the same. I felt the pull of them on my soul, though I could not touch them. They stirred within me, the phantom of a memory that was no longer mine at all.

There were tapestries that didn’t even have me in them, aspects of fate that had been woven before my time. The lines of destiny that had guided me here twisted and knitted the world to suit my creation, and I hated every fucking second of it.

This was wrong. This level of interference and manipulation should not have been.

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. I both did and I didn’t, because none of this effort made sense with anything I could reconcile in my head. What purpose could be so great to go to this? To spendcenturiesmanipulating the lives of thousands…

“The answers are just ahead, through the temple pass,” Medusa said, guiding me to a narrow passage that ascended the stairs. Fromthe way the temple had been carved into the mountainside, I knew that there were three main vestibules to the temple.

“You’re not coming with me?” I asked, almost ashamed of the way my voice cracked. I’d known as much, or should have anyway. They’d told me this was a journey I had to make alone.

“I will see you very soon, daughter. I will be waiting for you within the Cradle, but the words of the Fates are for you and you alone to hear,” Medusa said, stepping up to the wall of the temple beside us. It opened for her, letting her step into the sunshine in a beautiful valley, filled with a waterfall and still pond, an Eden within Tartarus.

I took to the stairs the way I’d entered this Hel.

Alone.

SIXTY-FOUR

CALDRIS

There was no trace of the thing that had once been Estrella’s father remaining in the ferryman while he rowed us up the tangle of rivers to the secret entrance to Tartarus. It was the impossibility of the situation that kept me quiet, kept me from prying and trying to find the man who would have been horrified to know that his daughter was prepared to die in the Cradle of Creation.

That whatever her purpose was and whatever destiny had drawn her to this place and this time, she accepted that her life was the price the Fates demanded. I knew now the words that had made her believe that was true, and my fingers danced along my thigh as I stood on the boat. Even Brann, who seemed incapable of shutting his mouth, didn’t dare to speak to me for fear of the consequences, his own face twisted into a sorrowful expression that reminded me of the hole where my heart had once been.

My heart beat outside my chest, because it thudded within hers. Without the ability to feel her, with the bond silenced by this strangebarrier between us, I felt as if I were alone all over again. As if the Veil still existed and I could only feel the faintest of whispers of her existence. My heart was still, my life feeling pointless.

I had to have faith in her ability to return, in the fact that her mother would not have brought her into that temple knowing that her death would come. Estrella had been warned of her coming death since that night in the woods of Mistfell when Adelphia had warned her that death was coming for her after her candle fell from the stone. There was no other choice but to accept that two types of death existed, that Estrella still clung to the woman she’d been as a human. There was a figurative death in that loss that she failed to anticipate the power of. Letting go of that version of herself would feel like a sacrifice, it would feel like she was being torn from her body if she were to ever give that girl up in truth. I loved that human girl, the innocence of her gaze when it had found me staring at her in that barn. While life may not have been kind to her, there was a certain quality to her that could only exist because of her young life.

Age hardened you. It tore the kindness from your soul and ripped the care from your bones. It had long since made me cynical and forced me to see the worst in people, but Estrella always hoped for the best. She hoped people would prove her right and be as gentle as she would be to any who loved her, but she hadn’t yet felt centuries of disappointment when people acted for their own selfish gain.

Age tore the innocence away. Age took your ability to be hurt and morphed it into a fever dream, a breathing, tangible thing that you could never seem to shake. Age made it so that you anticipated the pain of that betrayal with every step you took.

I didn’t know that I had it in me to believe that the people who had my mate weregood. I just had to hope that their own self-interest aligned with mine, that they needed my mate alive far more than they needed her dead. In that, I had to trust.

Otherwise I’d have flung myself into the closest river, gladly joining her in this Hel forever.

Instead, I stood in silence as the ferryman guided us out through the cave we’d entered, returning Brann and I to the land of the living as the Priestess had requested. It was a bittersweet thing to be returning to my home, knowing that my mother was dead and I was the King of Winter. That I’d had to leave my mate behind after all my desire to help her. I didn’t think I’d managed to do anything for her in this place except to be a shoulder for her to lean on, a comfort to her emotionally. These trials weren’t for me, and the helplessnessof that fact and my helplessness in what would come didn’t sit right with me.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Brann asked as we emerged into the light of day. The sun was far too bright on my face, after the time spent in the dimness of Tartarus, and I turned my head to stare at the floor of the boat as the ferryman continued to row.

“She will be,” I said, letting my resolve power the words. If there was one thing I knew about my mate, it was that her ability to survive anything life threw at her was her true magic. She would adapt and change as she needed, serving whatever purpose was necessary so that she could come back to me. She’dlivethrough sheer determination alone, bending the will of the Fates to hers.

That was who she was. That was her strength.

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