Page 128 of For the Love of the Gods

Dominic jumped after me, our steps echoing louder as the material covering the hall turned from glittering black tile to a soulless gray stone. “I’m going to keep following you, you know.”

“That’s kind of the point!” I yelled, looking over my shoulder at him. He looked crazed with desperation.

What did the Fates do to him?I’d hardly ever seen him so disheveled. Only when he found me in the Temple.

I forced my head back around my shoulder and away from his penetrating gaze. We reached the knee-height gate moments later, and I pushed through it without warning, jolting Lachesis from a nap in her chair. The old crone fell asleep in minutes.

They might be mad, but who gave a fuck.

“Rose, what are you doing?” Dominic said again, the gravel in his voice teetering dangerously close to the tone he used when he had his lips pressed against my ear.

“Shut up,” I snapped back, before turning to face the Fates where they now sat at attention in their hovering chairs. The dome that housed them was large, and currently without light. In moments it would light up with the evidence that would drive the knife embedded in my chest an inch deeper.

“Clotho, be a dear and pull up our Fate lines, please.”

I didn’t recognize my own voice, hoarse and barely above a whisper. But in the hollowed dome where you could hear the droplets of water crashing to the floor, it came out loud and scraping.

Clotho had dropped the pity and now just looked sad. I didn’t even know she could. And Atropos wasn’t making eye contact with me.

Even they knew how fucked up this was.

Dominic was close to me now. I refused to look at him, training my eyes on the dome and waiting for my heart to shatter, but I could feel him close. Within a few inches.

I was always so aware of his presence. That was something I would miss, how the knowledge of his proximity to me in the room had turned comforting. Now it was doomed to be tense.

“Clotho,” I said, when she stalled.

She released a breath and twitched a gray hand, sending two bright gold strands shooting across the dome. They stood on their own for a second, before pulling together and twisting around one another like a full-body hug.

Two different strands, but part of the same rope.

Fated.

I let myself admire the beauty of it for a moment. It was the second and last time I would ever look at them.

I imagined a world where I was studying them with Dominic, reminiscing over how our relationship started, but proud of how we’d changed. But, no, in reality I was pulling the cloth back from his eyes, opening them to the fact that he didn’t actually love me.

I was snapped out of the moment, however, by Dominic’s voice.

“Fuck.”

The only thing I could do was release a laugh in disbelief. That word was confirmation that he was stuck with me and he hated it. There was no way I could look at him now, so I kept my stare trained to the floor.

His rejection hurt more than I thought it would. Who was I kidding, though. I was bleeding out, dying, at the sound of his voice.

Nothing had ever hurt like this, and I needed to get out of that room. I allowed myself one more look at our Fate lines, at the end where the bit of his that was longer than mine curled down, as if it couldn’t stand to have even one inch not touching mine.

My eyes dropped to the floor again and I turned, in the direction away from Dominic, to head towards the exit. An exit he let me walk straight of as he stared at the lines with a stricken expression planted on his beautiful face, oblivious to my heart breaking.

Chapter 34

Dominic

I was such a fucking idiot.

I knew the signs, should have put them together. Rose still grieving her brother. Asking me if I’d ever tried to bring my parents back. Sneaking off in tactical gear and lying about where she was.

I had practically begged her to test me that first night, dared her to go to the Fates and call me on my bullshit, convinced they wouldn’t tell her a thing.

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