Fire, a property both cleansing and ruinous.
It reared its untamed head within me now, and my heart clenched. How far would one go for a love deemed unsuitable? Was it purely hopeful to think that with love in our hearts, we could outrun the flames, or did their might stretch to the ends of the realm? Did it outlast the realms?
What would one sacrifice to fire in order to save another thing they loved? And if the realms burned to ash, what would be left behind?
“There’s one question that has always bothered me about the folktale, though,” Esmond said, appearing to be thinking out loud more than to me. “The tragic versions end in ashes, but there are the more romantic views. Either way, we knowPtholenix Ascended. But if the more hopeful ending is to be believed, and the fox did not die…where did she go?”
Chapter Sixty-One
Vale
There was blood everywhere.Every grain of sand in the desert was drenched crimson, every body laying lifeless and wrenching a deep sorrow in my gut. How did this happen? How did we get here?
If I could unveil the path, perhaps we could alter it?—
No. Fates could not be altered. That was not the purpose of this magic. My hands fisted in frustration, nails digging crescents into my palms until the skin sliced open.
Readings were given to Starsearchers to map the paths that would get us to their ends, and then choices could be made, but we could never know how one small decision would shift the entire future. Horror turned my bones to ice as I dug through more star-given paths. Every one ended here.
Unavoidable.
One of the most feared words to a purveyor of fortunes because it was so permanent. My breaths came shorter as more bodies fell. As white mist crept forward in shrouding tendrils, and I raged to the Fates. Begged for a way to combat it.
As I dropped to my knees atop crimson sand and screamed for someone to show me a way; as blood seeped through my skirt, sticking to my skin; as I pleaded and cried.
No one answered.
Not a single of my nine Fate ties had anything else to share.
The gravity sank a rock in my chest, my breathing turned short and panicked. The celestial-born Fatesworn bond riled feverishly within me.
Pressure. There was pressure on my hands. My arms. Tugging me across realms.
Vale.
I snapped from the reading.
“Cypherion?” I asked without turning away from the balcony view, the starlit dunes still in the night beyond the revelrous city. Pristinely moonlit, not a drop of red in sight.
“What’s wrong?”
I blinked up at him. “What?”
“I could read you pretty easily before, but now…” He tapped my Fatesworn tattoo. “I can feel something is wrong.” His deep blue eyes searched the view as if he’d find the culprit.
In reassurance to myself after what I’d seen, to prove he was here, soul tied to mine, I sent a beat of love down that starlight-threaded connection.
“Stargirl,” Cypherion sighed when it reached him, and my tension unraveled at that word on his lips.
He tilted my chin up, and between the riled magic and the bond, the kiss was consuming. It seared down to my very core. I ached for him, for his touch across my skin, his lips against my body.
His hand threading through my hair sent a shockwave of pleasure through me, the other pressing me tightly enough to him that every line of hard muscle was evident. The bond cravedhim, sweeping every other thought from my head as the spot between my legs throbbed.
But Cypherion pulled back, stare dazed and voice husky as he asked, “How is the Fatecatcher power feeling?”
“It’s a bit overwhelming,” I downplayed, struggling to catch my breath. Truly, it was an immense well in my chest waiting to burst. “I don’t know if it’s because there are so many warriors here tonight. Maybe because the Starsearcher legions brought so many of those imbued weapons, so the resins are pulling at the depths of my readings, but the Fates have been exceedingly loud.”
“What are they speaking of?”
