Page 65 of In Death's Hands
“The Fates have gone quiet.”
“How do you know?” Atys asks.
From what Nathan told me, they know the Fates are quiet. They don’t know why, nor where they are. All they know, from whatever inherent memory still lives inside them after whatever happened to them, is that they truly exist. And yet here is this brotherhood that claims to work for them. A brotherhood made up of humans and other beings that don’t seem to be quite as human as Fenrick and me.
Fenrick stays silent, refusing to look at Atys, who looks entirely too serious for a man wearing a bright red sarong with white and blue flowers.
“You’ve talked to them?” I ask, releasing my friends’ hands to move to Nathan.
The tension emanating from him is like a magnet. I yearn to put my hand on his arm, to loosen the corded muscles shaking under the tight black fabric of his shirt. When I settle next to him, he takes a big breath that seems to go nowhere, as if he’s holding my scent in his lungs.
What a ridiculous thought.
I focus on Fenrick, whose eyes look like they’re following a tennis match, with their excessive back-and-forth between me and the man at my side.
At Fenrick’s silence, something violent crosses my mind. I’m slightly shocked as I contemplate how tomakehim talk. My life pouring coffee to strangers seems so far away. Would I even be able to get back to it? Shame tightens my throat. It’s an oily feeling, wondering how far you’re willing to go for something, and I’m relieved when Atys brings his dagger to Fenrick’s skin and saves me from getting an answer. My exhale is shaky as I forcefully push my thoughts out of my head, all too willing to pretend that I never even once considered stomping on an already broken hand to get what I want.
Atys’ dagger glints in the light as it slices an arc in the air before meeting flesh.
I blink, and more blood is trickling out, pouring out of Fenrick’s body in tiny rivulets. The colour is so bright, and so much darker in the light of the crystal chandelier illuminating the large room, that I’m mesmerised by it. Something feels so…rightabout that blood pouring. A shiver runs down my spine.
This man is wrong.The thought is foreign as it clangs around in my head. Like a certainty. An absolute knowledge. My lips stretch slightly at the corners. He will get what’s coming for him. For the affront he committed. Him and others like him.
A strong hand on my back, Nathan’s, startles me. Goodness, what is wrong with me? Where did those horrible thoughts come from?
My eyes widen at the pool of blood at Fenrick’s knees. I swallow the bile that comes up my throat.
Atys is talking, and I vaguely hear him explain how the knife is embedded into some important part that will have the brother slowly dying. A part of me wants to say that there is no part of the body that wouldn’t be important if a blade was inside it, but I keep my mouth shut. I’m working so hard on shutting everything off, on locking my trembling muscles, that I’m sure if I open my mouth, everything will come pouring out. Nathan’s hand tightens on my back, and I want to tell him not to show he cares, but I’m too grateful for his warmth to move away.
My ears stop ringing enough to hear Fenrick’s ragged breaths. He coughs, and more blood spills out of the wound at his side.
“Speak,” I say, expecting my voice to be this trembling, pathetic thing, but what comes out is strong. Fierce even. A voice that doesn’t seem to belong to me.
The man’s brown eyes are wide when they collide with mine. He closes them for a second, two, and when he reopens them, relief floods my system.
“The Great Betrayer is behind what happened to them,” Fenrick says as he jerks his chin to Nathan and Atys standing beside me. Shock is a living entity grabbing the whole room in its embrace. I can feel it stealing the oxygen around me, narrowingeveryone’s focus down to one single man’s words. “They are behind what happened tothem, too.”
“The Fates,” I say. Not a question, because for a reason I cannot begin to comprehend, I already know.
He nods, then swallows. The act is obviously painful as he struggles to steady his breathing. “We’ve known. We’ve… tried. But even he has gone quiet.”
I take a step forward, my heart a war drum in my ears. “Who?”
“Thetlum,” he says, his voice breaking. Nathan shudders beside me and I hear a few others gasp.
“That name,” murmurs Nathan, shaking his head as if to clear it. When he looks at me, I see a battle in his eyes, like he’s pushing to lift some unknown veil.
“Do you remember him?” The question comes from Fenrick.
My friend nods. “How?”
“The Great Betrayer’s curse. It didn’t erase your memories. It hid them, deep inside all of you.”
“How do you know?” thunders Thalnus.
“Hetold us. Decades ago, he found our brotherhood. Demanded protection.” He shakes his head. “We have served the Order for centuries, fightingforthe Fates. They would make their will known through one of the Nine and we would execute. Sometimes literally. But none have ever seen one of them in person. And he was sobroken. I was young then, but I still remember it. It was like life had been siphoned away from his body, his soul. Barely a spark left. And now that spark is gone.”
“What does itmean?” I ask, more frustrated than I’ve ever been.
