Page 5 of A Fate Everlasting

But someone was there. Hands pressed under my back, just as the darkness consumed me. My vision blurred, the edges of reality pulling away as I was carried by someone, my body too heavy to respond. I let myself sink into the darkness, my consciousness slipping like sand through my fingers.

Maybe I’d been drugged, the taste of that sickly brown liquor still on my tongue. The world spun, and I cursed Lily for bringing me here. I couldn’t shake the disorienting haze, the pull of the darkness that wasn’t just outside, but inside, too.

I felt the faintest brush of something soft against my shoulders, the abruptness of cold leather beneath me as I was placed in a car.

I moved my lips to protest, but there was no sound, as if my body had forgotten how to fight back. Every muscle felt sedated.

My exhaustion was a weight, pressing me deeper into the leather seat. I sank into it, eyes unfocused, my mind a step behind, scrambling to catch up. I wanted to believe I was drunk, delirious, that this wasn’t real, that there was no reaching darkness. But something about it told me I was far past that illusion.

“Lily?” I called out.Whose car was this? Where was I?Panic began to set in, revving against the hazy tiredness. My breath fogged against the window, the world outside blurring into a smear of color as the car pulled away. I turned away, trying to escape the weight of the car’s dark interior. “Hugo?”

I leaned forward, fingers curling around the edge of the passenger seat. “Hello?” I called.

Then the figure turned, and I recognized my assailant, or maybe my savior, immediately.

“I asked you not to leave the house,” the executor said, hisvoice low, like he was talking to a child who wouldn’t listen. “I’m supposed to watch you until you arrive at Evermore.”

“I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.” My voice wavered, pitching. He gave me a look I couldn’t place in the shadowy light of the car before reaching into the glove compartment.

“Have you eaten?” he said at last, and I felt something cool crinkle against my palm. He didn’t speak again until I slowly unwrapped it. A sticky cinnamon bun, something so incongruously normal in the chaos. “You’ll need your strength. Trust your parents, Arabella. They only want what’s best for you.”

The icing sugar was tacky against my fingers as I peeled the plastic back, a rush of annoyance searing through me. But I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in three days, and I couldn’t really tell where the worry-knot in my stomach ended, and the hunger began.

I slumped back into my seat, sugar melting onto my tongue as I drove my fingers into the armrest. I wanted to scream at him, to demand he tore up the paperwork, to ask Lily to find me a lawyer, someone,anyoneto fight for what was mine. But the words caught in my throat. Maybe I didn’t know what was best for me anymore, really.

I tore off another bite. The taste turned cloying under his gaze. Every second that passed felt like an assessment, like I was a problem he was trying to manage. He had saved me, hadn’t he? It was his arms that had carried me to the car, and yet I wasn’t sure of what I had seen. The shadows, the darkness. Had I imagined it all?

“You saw it, right?” I asked in a too-small voice, the weight of the question heavy in the air between us.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The executor’s tone was almost amused as he said, “All I saw was a lot of underage drinking.”

I didn’t press him further, but a flash ofheat burned down my cheek. I didn’t want to leave home. I’d lost so much already. I wiped the tear away quickly, closing my eyes against the unanswered questions.

The Thread pulled at me, again, splintering through my chest like frostbite. Ihatedit. I hated how it never left me. I used to think it was something I’d inherited from my mother. She had her own kind of madness.

I remember the first time I heard it. I was seven. The mirror opposite my bed cracked clean down the center. Just… shattered.A voice whispered my name. I thought it was a ghost. A monster. My mother called it a nightmare and held me until I fell asleep.

But in the morning the mirror was gone.

Grief intensified it, but the Thread had been with me long before the accident. Long before I ever learned what death really meant. I didn’t know what it was, only that it wanted something.

And I was gettingverytired of listening.

3

The plane slammed into the tarmac, metal screeching as if trying to tear itself apart. A tremor rolled through the cabin, making the overhead bins rattle. Then applause rippled, thin and hollow, as though we had survived something.

My knuckles whitened against the armrest.

Soon, we were back in another car, the city dissolving behind us. My eyes burned, gritty from a night that hadn’t felt like sleep. The road narrowed as we wound through the countryside, hedges closing in like grasping hands, skeletal branches scraping against the windows in warning. I reached for the crumpled newspaper on the seat, its headline cutting through the haze.

The Vanishing Act of Mr. Hugo Fox

The last confirmed sighting of Mr. Fox was Saturday night, slipping into Astoria Manor’s black iron gates. He was seen speaking with an unnamed associate of the Astoria family just hours before he disappeared.

My throat tightened. I’d seen him vanish. I’d felt it. Whatever that thing was, I’d turned it over and over in my mind during the flight. It hadn’t just been shadow. But if the executor had saved me, another cruel twist of fate or luck, what happened to Hugo?

The newspaper blurred. I wanted to ask the executor what happened that night again, but I already knew I’d be hit with the same patronizing denial.

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