Page 88 of Of Vows and War: Special Edition
“Stassi, there’s no need to lie.”
“Fine. I want to kill you where you stand. Happy?”
“Immensely,” she remarked, chuckling. Then she stopped before me, her hands behind her back and a smirk upon her face. “You test fate, Stassi.”
“Of course I do,” I said, crossing my arms. “Padon has a vision for fate and wishes to remove chance, right? Is that why you’re here?”
“Oh please, he isn’t thinking of you at the moment. The idiot cares about his mortal pet more than anything else.” The two of us simultaneously rolled our eyes. He had made a mistake sending Venturae. She never was his biggest fan. “But, you are messing with the rule of Eternity. I can feel the way the magic of chance pulses and writhes within me. Fate is weaker than normal, and it pushes me towards you.”
Fate and Chance had always been one of the most volatile of the ten original seeds. Venturae called it hypnotic. The two opposites warred inside of her, shoving her towards different paths so that she may alter the future in their favor. While she didn’t see what was to come like the Oracles of this world, Venturae could change the future irrevocably. With her magic she could incinerate entire strings of possibility. All she had to do was listen to the beasts upon each shoulder.
Which meant that if she was here and telling me I was weakening fate itself, then she was very likely being urged to eliminate me.
“What do the monsters within you say you must do?”
“My darling fate wishes for you to cease this nonsense or die. You are destroying divine purpose,” she responded, shruggingoff the insinuation that she would kill me at the behest of the magic in her body. “On the other hand, fate seems to have been suddenly fed with whatever occurred mere minutes ago. Something you did just pushed the future back on the course it was meant to take.”
“How did you know I was here?” I asked, changing the subject. Stella being seen by anyone would be bad, but Venturae had a habit of losing herself to the seed within her, and I wasn’t sure how her magic would react if she saw the empress or even merely found out she lived on this world.
“Followed the fetch, duh.”
“Of course you did, the nasty creature.”
“It already knew you, so it was the easiest option,” she shrugged. “Plus, I thought we might benefit from a chat.”
“About?” I asked with a raise of my brow.
“You coming back home.”
“Venturae, I fear you’ve lost your mind in your old age.” My words were meant to be haughty, but they came out far more strained. “Padon will kill me if I come back. Then you will be short three high demons instead of two.”
“Chance calls to me, Stassi. It says we are on the cusp of great change. The two of them argue within my bones. They push and pull and shout and scream. Of all the things they fight over, they agree on one thing. That is the importance of getting you home. Something about you being here is changing things, and not in our favor.” Her words held a haunting edge, but I couldn’t help myself from clarifying.
“Our favor? Or Padon’s?”
“Shamay’s,” she corrected. I stilled, looking up at her in horror. What could me being here possibly do to hurt our entire world? I was trying to save it for fuck’s sake! Venturae’s head quirked to the side, her eyes going distant. As if she werelistening to someone speak. “Stassi, tell me, have you found Stella?”
Every ounce of my self-control was tested then as I willed my face to remain straight. Giving away Stella would do the exact opposite of what I was attempting to accomplish. It would ruin everything,
“How would I find her so quickly when none of us have sensed her in fifteen millennia?” I asked instead, opting not to answer with a lie.
A smile split Venturae’s face, fate and chance warring upon their respective halves. “How indeed.”
“Does Padon know you’re here? That I’m here?”
“His fetch had already checked here, so he assumes you aren’t. I cornered the fetch after and told it to keep looking on this world just in case. Which was why it came straight to me instead of him. As far as he knows, I’m huddled up in my manor willing Fate and Chance to side with us.” Her smile became even more devious as she lifted her hand and twirled a pink strand of my hair. Great, she was going to negotiate. “Come home with me and I will hide you away until he calms down. Let him take the girl and this world, then he won’t be angry anymore.”
“If I say no?”
“Then I will be forced to tell him that you are here.” When I merely scoffed in response and slapped her hand away, Venturae straightened, her forest-green gaze bearing down on me. “And I will tell him that our empress lies in wait within a forest full of creatures of Death and Creation.”
I couldn’t stop the gasp that slipped from my lips, my jaw dropping open as I stared at the high demon before me. She knew. How the fuck did she know? It had to have been those foul things inside of her, the only seed of the ten that was somehow capable of thought—ofwill.
“You don’t understand, we will all die if we don’t restore the seeds. How can we do that with Padon running our entire world into the ground?” I asked—maybe even pleaded. I couldn’t leave, not before everything was said and done. While this world meant nothing to me, it meant everything to Stella and Asta. I might have hated them in that moment, but I never wanted their heartbreak.
“Well, I think—” Venturae cut herself off, both of us sensing the swell of magic as it came from not the forest, but the ocean to our right. Heads jerking towards the source, we both watched in horror as Jonah appeared from the deep brown mist of his magic. Even worse was the realization that we were currently upon a world that was on the verge of war. Jonah would be horribly—terrifyingly—strong here.
He wore plain black trousers, his cream long-sleeved top billowing in the wind as he walked. His skin was a light brown, the yellow undertones nearly hiding the blue blush beneath. With every step he took our way, his upturned chocolate eyes seemed to dig deeper into us.
