Page 3 of A Fate Everlasting

“Come over.” My voice was thick, throat aching. “Use the window.”

The phone beeped to let me know the call had dropped, but a moment later, she was in my room. The heavy vanilla perfumeshe’d generously sprayed over herself was familiar in a nauseating kind of way. She took her usual spot, cross-legged on my bed, and twirled the end of her braid while I explained.

“Check this out.” I tossed the file the executor left behind toward her, and my mouth cracked a smile despite myself. Itwasridiculous. The picture of the Cavendish family fluttered out, followed by the brochure.

“My god,” she recoiled, flipping through the pages. “It’s really givingcontrol-freak from beyond the grave. They really couldn’t just leave you money and let you be?”

“Right?” I said hollowly, fingers racing across my laptop keyboard as I searched up Evermore Preparatory College again. There were no results. Just a blurry crest and a vague location tag somewhere in Devon. The surrounding area looked pretty, but in a disgustingly gray kind of way. I turned the screen toward Lily. “What do people evendothere?”

“My friend did a Round Square transfer to a school there for a year. You remember Sammy?” I nodded. “She said the international students called it Vampire Syndrome. You get pale and all malnourished because the food sucks. And she had these dark circles under her eyes from never sleeping.”

“This isn’t helping,” I groaned, smacking her knee. Still, a laugh escaped me.

Lily grinned. “Ohandshe got her heart broken, too, ‘cause obviously it was never going to work long term. Truly the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Or a villain origin story,” I muttered, slamming the laptop shut and stuffing it into the sleeve of my suitcase. “I won’t get sucked into all of that. I’m serving my two and a half years and that’s it.”

“You’re stronger than me,” Lily sighed dramatically. “Fine. If you don’t fall in love, maybe you’ll read. Or writepoetryor something. Isn’t that what sad people do in rainy countries?”

“My parents both studied in England,” I said, the words catching slightly on something in my chest. I gave her a small, crooked smile. “So yes. Basically.”

“You could follow in their footsteps then,” Lily smiled. “Live out their legacy or whatever.”

I flinched. Something deep inside me recoiled at the idea. Following in their footsteps would mean losing myself completely. My parents had been consumed by whatever they were chasing. I refused to vanish the same way.

“So you’re not allowed to leave the house tonight?” Lily jutted out her bottom lip. “How much trouble can you really get in if your fate is already sealed?”

“You have a point,” I grinned. “One last night. A true send-off.”

“A true send-off,” Lily echoed, mirroring my grin. “There’s a party at Astoria Manor, that members club on a private beach near the Pacific Coast Highway.”

“You’re forgetting one thing. We aren’t members, and we aren’t twenty-one.”

“You’reforgettingthat I know…everyone,” Lily laughed breezily. “Remember Arden? Trust fund, dead eyes, got sent away to boarding school last year?”

“What, he owns the club?”

“His father does,” Lily nodded. “And there’s a huge end-of-summer party there tonight. Come on, babe, please do this for me. One last crazy night before you’re gone for good.”

I couldn’t say no. This might be our last night together.

“Fine,” I nodded. If I stayed home the Thread would keep screaming. The noise of the party would hopefully drown it out. If I couldn’t stop any of this, I could at least choosehowI left. This one last thing would be mine.

“It’s settled then.” Lily grinned. I wanted to believe home hadn’t already become a memory yet, but part of me knew ithad. We were already ghosts of ourselves, and I no longer belonged to this world.

The zipper hissed shut. I felt the darkness again, clouding my vision and simmering in my veins.

“Last chance,”the Thread murmured. I snapped the suitcase handle into place.

2

The mist coiled in ribbons, dissolving into the dark like a breath stolen from the night itself. This should’ve been an ordinary moment, one last reckless act of defiance before everything changed. I knew better. Nothing had been ordinary since the accident, since the phone rang in the dead of night and carved my life into before and after.

Lily and I had slipped out through my bedroom window, scaling the vine-covered awning in breathless silence. I could still feel the scrape at my knee, the sting of torn skin, the blood blooming like crushed raspberries.

Two guards nodded to us as the gates creaked open. The wood-paneled exterior looked damp, the darkened windows like unblinking eyes as they watched our approach. Beneath the cliffs, waves slammed into the jagged rocks.

“We’re on Arden Astoria’s list,” Lily said, handing over her keys like a parking space had a plaque with her name on it.

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