Page 36 of Veiled Fate
“All that green …”
“You think it’s Fate,” I said.
“What else could it be?”
“Yeah. She’s playing games with me, it seems. Hurting me. Healing me. Hurting me. Healing me.” I shook my head, irritated at being at the mercy of the whims of a goddess. “That bitch.”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty,” Kiel said, rubbing his jaw in thought. “I’m not sure it’s a game.”
I gave him my bestgo on, this ought to be goodlook.
“It’s not games. It’s a war,” he explained. “Between the power of Fate and Fate herself.”
“Between the … but aren’t they the same things?”
“Not quite. I mean, yes, but also no. Your body is mortal. It’s notmeantto house the literal power of a goddess, even a fragment of her. That power, that energy, is quite literally tearing you apart from the inside out. Fate, however, doesn’t want to see you killed.”
“So, Fate is healing me but also killing me at the same time?”
Kiel shrugged. “Yes.”
“So, she’s trying to get out, but she also doesn’t want to leave home. Like a child threatening to move out but having nowhere to go, so they walk to the end of the street and then sit down?”
“Something like that,” he said, choking back a laugh at my description. “Fate, I think, is trying tohelp you. Why else would she pull you into that dream and show you Mount Triumph and the Temple of Blessed Fate?”
“You think it’s a message?”
“More than likely,” he said.
“I don’t get it. If she could heal me, as we can see,” I said, my energy already returning, “then why let them reopen and nearly kill me like that? She put me on death's door, and then just, what, changed her mind? That sounds more than a little capricious.”
Kiel took my hand, squeezing it as I worked to calm myself and the rising anger at the idea of being toyed with by a goddess. “Maybe she was distracted? Something took her attention away, and her power began to leak out inadvertently?”
“Great, an easily distracted goddess. Nobody bring anything shiny near me.” I snorted. “She probably just wanted me to kiss you since that’s what snapped her back.”
He didn’t laugh. Instead, his eyes narrowed.
“That was ajoke,” I said pointedly.
“Maybe,” he said. “But Jada, this isFatewe’re talking about here. So, maybe shedidwant that. After all, you were pretty pissed at me and trying to end things. It’s convoluted, but … as soon as you kissed me, she came back.”
“Could just be that kissing you was enough of an action to grab her attention again. And I’mstillmad at you. I kissed you because I thought I was going to die. Not because I’ve forgiven you.”
“I know,” he said softly, glancing away for a split second as he composed himself.
“Or maybe,” I mused, trying to change the subject, “she wanted us here. In Lycaon.”
“Now, why would she—” Kiel stopped abruptly, his eyes latching onto mine.
“What? What is it?”
“Two days from now marks the start of the Fate Festival,” he said softly.
“It does?” I’d lost the passage of time with everything that had been going on, but if Kiel said it started in two days, then it started in two days.
“Yes. Which means it’s the Fate Night.”
“How oddly coincidental, considering we were going to bypass Lycaon and keep heading north,” I said. “We would have been out in the middle of nowhere, halfway between here and Nycitum, instead of in the heart of the biggest city in the empire.”
