Lanie Bross - Fates

And then a hand on his back: Corinthe, saying, “Wait.”

The sound of her voice and the pressure of her touch pierced the dull fog in his brain, the blur of anger and hurt.

No more fighting. Not worth it. He released his hold on Mike, who slid down the wall and thudded to the ground. Karen immediately crouched down next to him.

“I didn’t know you two were still together,” Mike said, wiping the corner of his mouth. “She said—”

Karen cut him off and turned an accusatory stare at Luc.

“What the hell are you doing? What are you trying to prove?”

The venom in her voice caught him completely off guard.

“ Prove? Jesus, Karen. You’re my girlfriend —”

“Was. Was your girlfriend.” Tears made her eyes shine in the soft light and a lump rose up in his throat. “You promised, Luc. Promised you’d show up on time, promised you’d actually be here. I can’t do this anymore. You don’t want to be with me and we both know it.”

He swallowed. The anger slowly seeped away, leaving a deep hollow in his stomach. And, even deeper than that: A momentary lifting. A sense of relief.

It was only a flash. Then he felt empty again, as though he’d been carved out from inside.

“Karen …” He reached for her. She was everything he thought he wanted. Why couldn’t he just love her? “Please.”

“Leave, Luc.” Karen choked back a sob. “Just go home.”

He hesitated. Mike was watching him warily, as though he expected Luc to lunge for him at any second. But Luc just felt tired. Too tired to fight.

“Please,” Karen said. Her voice was strangled.

People had crowded into the hallway, trying to get a look. The girl, Corinthe, was gone. Everyone was deathly quiet but he knew that soon the whispers would begin. Luc pushed through the crowd with more force than was necessary. By Monday, this would be all over school.

Perfect.

He needed to get out of there.

He pushed through the kitchen, avoiding Lily’s triumphant gaze. He took the steps two at a time and gulped in lungfuls of cool night air when he burst onto the deck. He doubled over for a second, panting, fighting the sick feeling in his stomach. Jesus. He’d been a first-class asshole. He hadn’t seen it coming.

“You okay, dude?” Tyler clapped a hand on Luc’s shoulder and laughed. “Looks like you need to take it easy on the brews, man.”

Luc yanked away from Tyler’s touch and pushed his way through the people still laughing and partying on the deck. They’d know soon enough that the golden couple had broken up. News like that spread faster than a California wildfire.

As soon as he landed on the boardwalk, he started to run. Luc had no idea where he was going; he just needed to get as far away from everyone as possible.

There was little traffic on Marina Boulevard, and after a few minutes, he slowed to a walk. His lungs hurt, as if someone were squeezing them. The image of Karen and Mike swirled around in his head. Weirdly, he didn’t feel mad anymore. He felt strangely detached, as if he were watching a movie from someone else’s life. Already he regretted swinging at Mike.

Luc jammed his hands into his pockets and hurried across the street, cutting down Baker. Ahead, the lights from the Palace of Fine Arts reflected across the lagoon.

The place always felt peaceful to him. He and Jas used to go there a lot when they were younger. With Mom. Luc hadn’t been back since she left. His mother had loved the rotunda. She said it was a magical place. Jasmine would sit curled up in her lap, wide-eyed and silent, as she told stories about fairies and knights and beautiful princesses rescued in the nick of time.

After their mother left, Luc had stopped believing.

There was no such thing as happily ever after.

The Messenger was nestled in the palm of Corinthe’s hand. Once outside, on the safety of the deck, she released it. It flew up and hummed past her, its flickering glow fading into darkness. It would make its way back to the lagoon to deliver the message: another destiny fulfilled. Corinthe leaned over the polished wooden railing of the lower deck and watched Luc until he disappeared into the darkness. She felt … troubled. Was that the word? Was that the feeling ?

Humans, she thought, didn’t understand that they were simply parts of a much vaster plan. Karen was fated to fall in love with someone else; Corinthe wished she could have explained it to the boy, Luc, so he would understand.

This had been an easy task—so easy, in fact, Corinthe wondered why this particular fate had required the aid of an Executor. Corinthe had sought out Mike at the party and encouraged him to act on his feelings toward Karen. He had hesitated, sure that Karen already had a boyfriend. It took a persuasive conversation and one small lie to convince him otherwise.

Karen had been easier to sway. Her doubts had obviously been there even before Corinthe intervened.

“Where is he now?” Corinthe had asked, widening her eyes, imitating a look of surprise and concern (Was it concern? Or was it caring?) when Karen mentioned her boyfriend.

Mike and Karen had done the rest.

She grabbed a crystal flute of champagne and quickly shouldered her way out of the crowd. People were whispering and giggling, and several times she heard his—Luc’s—name. It made her unaccountably angry —that was a word, and a feeling, she knew.

Humans concerned themselves with so much that didn’t matter, with so much they had no stake in. Why?

As a Fate, she and her sister Fates had lived in perfect harmony. Each had a task and a role. They were like threads in a large tapestry. Each individual strand was insignificant, but together they made something whole and beautiful. That was the essence of Pyralis: balance, equilibrium. As an Executor, her job was equally clear: do as the Messengers instructed.

That was the beautiful thing about the universe…it was a vast mechanism, full of a billion tiny spinning parts, all of them moving in tandem, like one enormous clock with a vast pendulum that ticked back and forth between night and day, death and life.

And yet, the strange sensation crept through her even as she struggled to put a name to it. The urge to run after the boy, Luc, made her muscles tense. She wanted to know he would be okay. She wanted to comfort him in some way.

She had to take several deep breaths before she could relax. Her job was done. She was one step closer to going home, so why couldn’t she just be happy and celebrate?

She took a long drink of the champagne as she made her way off the gangplank, enjoying the cool fizz of the liquid in her throat and the feel of the rough, still-warm planks underneath her feet. There were very few benefits to being exiled in Humana, but one of them was this: the vast collection of surfaces and sensations, the sting of new rain and the smooth bite of gravel. She remembered how the first time she’d ever had a drink of ice water it had brought a blinding pain to her head, directly behind her eyes—but it had made her laugh at the same time.

She turned in the direction the boy had gone, telling herself that she was not looking for him—only heading down to the water, where she could sit in the sand and watch the stars.

Lucas.

A nice human name—comfortable and rough at the same time, like the old blanket she used in her rooms underneath the rotunda. For ten years she’d been dwelling in this world, executing fates as the Unseen Ones willed, but none of the humans had made her feel this way before. What was different this time?

She had remembered the boy from the accident as soon as she’d seen him. Tasks rarely intertwined. At first, she thought surely something had gone wrong.