Page 16 of Veiled Fate
“Yes.” He shook his head. “Everyoneknows it. They just don’t know what it looks like.”
“That makes no sense.”
He lifted his eyes, a troubled look swirling in the blues of his iris. “Yes, it does.”
“How?”
“Because you were near the summit of Mount Triumph. At the entrance to the—”
“Temple of Blessed Fate,” I whispered.
Kiel nodded. “I told you that you’ve heard of it.”
“Of course,” I scoffed. “Everyonehas heard of it. Who doesn’t grow up being told of the secret Mount Triumph in the northern mountains, hidden away from the world, home to the very site where the Fate Stones were forged, and Fate herself was bound to them by the eight Alphas. But nobody knows what it looks like. So, how do you know I was there?”
“Because I’ve been there. I’ve seen it,” he said. “I’ve walked under the Hunters.”
“Oh.” My blunt reply appropriately marked the gravity of his revelation. “What does it mean, then?”
“If I had to take one guess, I would say that Fate wants you to go there for some reason. Why else would she reveal it to you?”
“I’m not sure. She wasn’t exactly in much of an answering mood.”
Kiel didn’t find the joke funny. “Well, if we want answers, we’ll probably only find them there.”
“The northern mountains,” I mused. “I’ve never been that far north before. Will we stop in Nycitum? I’ve always wanted to see its forges.”
“Maybe,” Kiel said, standing up. “If we’re lucky. We won’t have any time for sightseeing, though. The Nehringi will be after us.”
“But we left him in Arcadia,” I protested, trying to tamp down the fear the assassin's name brought bubbling up. Rubbing my hands over my stomach as a tremor ran through it, I bit down on my lip.
Don’t give it any power. Don’t give in. If the Nehringi could exert control without even being present, then he would have already won. I needed to be stronger.
“They’re famed hunters,” Kiel said. “I would bet he’s already making his way north around Lake Arcadia as fast as he can. Waiting for us. Alerting every small town and village he passes to be on the lookout for us. They won’t think twice about obeying orders from the Alpha. We’ll have to travel very carefully.”
I shuddered.
“Hey,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it. “We still have a heck of a head start. We’ll use that to our advantage. Ruthlessly. We’ll be okay. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
“Okay.” My voice was barely a whisper.
Kiel started to pull his hand back, but I gripped it tight reflexively, stopping him. Slowly, I looked up at him, meeting his eyes, seeing the concern for me written in them and on his face. He was worried, and rightfully so, most likely, that I was struggling to deal with everything that had happened. After all, how does one handle literally dying and coming back to life?
“What do I do?” I whispered, asking, nobegging, for his help.
“You have two choices,” he said, sitting beside me. The bunk creaked ominously under his weight. “You can either retreat from the world, ignoring everything that makes us alive, knowing that you’re immortal, or you can throw yourself into it. Do what you want to do, or what you knowneedsto be done, without fear of the consequences.”
I frowned. “Like starting a rebellion against those who rule.”
“Not quite what I had in mind,” he said, but the right side of his mouth quirked upward, even as his thumb rubbed against my hand absently.
“Yeah,” I whispered, a new and totally different tremor running through me. “Nothing ever seems to be quite what we had in mind. But that doesn’t stop it frombeing, all the same.”
“Jada,” he said quietly as the air in the room thickened, driving up the tension between us. “You’re still in shock.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, looking deep into his face and seeing the matching desire in him, held back only by his strength of will. “But that doesn’t stop it from being true.”
“Stopwhatfrom being true? We’re talking in hyperbole here.”
