Page 82 of A Fate Everlasting

“It shields you from harm. If you are wounded, it will mend you. If you try to die, it will pull you back. Evermore cannot summon you, nor can the afterlives claim you—not while this binds you to mortal life.”

His gloved hand closed around the pendant. “But you must never remove it. You are already marked. The moment the tether breaks, they will find you.”

“Alright.” My mother nodded quickly, her voice barely above a whisper. “That’s a deal. And what do you want in return?”

The High King leaned closer. “Yourfirstborn.”

My mother flinched, lip twitching. “What?”

“They will enter Evermore and graduate. They will stand where you stood, she will pay what you would not. They willredeemthe balance.” The High King’s voice deepened. “And not only that, they must?—”

The room tipped, as if the weight of the truth was too great. The vision snapped. The library heaved, warping around me as if reality itself was rejecting what I had seen. My body reeled as I staggered back, nearly crumpling under the weight of it.

No.No, that couldn’t be right. But it was. It was clear now. The Archangel had warned me. My mother was no hero. She had notescapedEvermore.

She had run. Hid. Bargained away the future.My future.She had bought her freedom… with my blood. Mylife.I wanted to deny it, but I knew it to be true.

The High King had been biding his time, patiently waiting for his moment to rise again all along. I was never meant to escape this place. I was always meant to return, until the debt my mother created was paid.

The pain wrenched through me like another loss. She was never the person I thought she was. I pressed a hand to my chest, but it didn’t stop the twisting ache. She hadn’t just left me. She hadn’t just abandoned me. She had traded me, sealed my fate in blood that was never hers to offer.

Dread pooled in my stomach like lead, nausea clawing its way up my throat.Why would she do this? What was she running from?I wanted to scream, to tear the necklace from my throat and fling it into the fire, but I couldn’t.

Why show me that now? Was it meant to warn me? Or just destroy whatever faith I had left?

My hands trembled. I pressed them to the marble floor just to feel something solid. I wasn’t ready for another vision. I wasn’t ready for any of this.

But the library wasn’t finished with me.

I needed air. I needed?—

Another book tore itself from the shelf before I could gather my thoughts. This was another sick and twisted game. I cursed Dante as the spine cracked open.

Before I could move away, the words were inside me again, filling my lungs and sinking heavily as they dragged me beneath the churning waters of another vision.

And then, I saw myself. I was lying in my bed at home. White linen bedsheets tangled around my limbs as the silver glow of the moon rippled through the open window. I was in my bedroom.

A shadow moved in the corner of the room. Verrine. She stepped into the light, a dagger in hand, her silk sleeve dark with blood. Slowly and methodically, she wiped the blade, her gaze fixed on the floor.

I followed her line of sight.Drip. Drip. Drip.Drops of crimson fell from my wrist, pooling against the white marble like shattered gemstones.

Verrine stilled. Her pupils contracted, pinpricks. “It can’t be,” she whispered. “Not her.”

A ripple moved through the shadows and then, from the dark, The High King of Elsewhere. “As planned. It’s not impossible. Just… unseen.”

He did not touch me, but his hand hovered just above my wrist, sealing the wound with the barest flick of his fingers. “As I hoped, she is an impossibility,” he murmured, voice heavy. “The only one of her kind. She was never meant to be born, but she doesn’t know that yet.”

Verrine turned sharply, calculating. “What does this mean, Aurelius?”

He exhaled slowly. “We are winning, but we must have patience. The time is not right. This girl is not yet made into allthat she will become. Not until she decides. The ether system cannot force her.She must choose the Fall.”

“So she is unmarked. Her blood carries no trace of what she might become?”

“Not yet.” The moonlight shone through the window but did nothing to illuminate the High King’s face beneath his hood. “But it will. When she chooses the Fall, it will remake her. When the time comes, she will tip the scales.” A slow, terrible smile crept across his face. “One way… or the other.”

“A child of both light and shadow, yet belonging to neither,” Verrine nodded. “She can never know what she is.”

And I hadn’t, until now. I finally had an answer, one that made more than a little sense. My parents had never sent me to Evermore. This had never been their dying wish. I was here to pay off a debt my mother couldn’t, a penance for her selfishness.

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