“Then I leave you to the Fates,” he says.
And then he is gone.
I stand outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the mountain of steps rising before me.
Chains still enclose my wrists.
Samael stands beside me. He does not say a word. One would think I’d personally killed his puppy or something.
Why did it matter to him what happened to me? Why should he care? What was his stake in all of this?
I supposed none of it mattered now.
Now it was left to the Fates.
Fuck. If the Father scared me, the Fates downright terrified me. I knew nothing about them, except for whatever lore I’d known in my mortal human life.
But one did not need to be a mythic scholar to determine that as far as shots went, the Fates were the bitches that called them.
Samael walks forward, ascending the staircase most famous for that montage Rocky scene. The world is gray around us, the setting familiar but the space alien. Walking between the realms these past seven years as a reaper meant that I can see both sides of the veil, but this was somewhere else entirely.
Save for Sam and me, there were no other souls present. There was no wind, no sun, no sky at all, really. I got the chilling feeling that the outside of the art gallery was being presented solely for my benefit, like I would somehow go mad if I were to be shown the true nature of this place.
As we approach the massive columns that make up the facade of the giant building, I cannot remember the last time I felt so small. I imagine myself a mouse as we enter the front doors, strolling right into the maw of a lion.
Together, we enter the museum.
Beside me, even Samael’s imposing form seems small here, with the ceilings that tower high overhead and the carefully staged lighting that draws the eye this way and that.
Another, grander staircase dominates the atrium, at the top of which sit three statues carved of the finest marble.
I damn near shit myself when I see the statues move.
Well, if reapers could have bowel movements, but you know what I mean.
They are marble, but they are no statues.
They are the Fates.
And I am the Fucked.
They sit in a row.
The one on the far left appears the youngest, a child of no more than nine. The stone from which she is carved, like the others to the right of her, is one giant mass. The artist has masterfully captured the folds of her dress and the glint in her cold, stony eyes.
The one in the middle is an adult woman, an older version of the child. With lovely, sharp features, and hair that seems to flow over her delicate shoulders even as it is hewn from pure stone.
The final Fate sits to the far right of the others, an old crone with a stone cane propped across her giant lap. All three sit silent was we approach. They do not blink, or breathe, or fidget. Only those cold gray orbs of eyes follow me, and the sight sends a chill down my spine.
Samael drops to a knee by the foot of the staircase, at the top of which they sit. No one tells me to, but I do the same, as if some ancient, internal alarm system has been switched into effect.
The child speaks first, voice precisely how one might expect it to be, but with a resonance I’ve never encountered except perhaps where the Father is concerned.
“Rise,” the child Fate says. “Let us look at you.”
Samael and I rise in unison. The senior Reaper shows no emotion, no concern upon his handsome brow… But there is something in the way he is holding his barbed tail aloft, in the set of his ebony wings.
Is he afraid for me?
Is he afraid for himself just by essence of being here?
And, finally, how the fuck had I gotten myself into this?
The middle Fate speaks next. “Cecilia and Samael,” she says.
It is just my name. I have heard it countless times throughout my existence, but I have never heard it spoken this way—as thought it is a curse, or a prayer.
Or both.
“Rule breaker,” says the old crone.
That definitely sounds like a curse.
“I—I can explain,” I begin.
The child Fate chuckles, the sound like bells floating over a meadow. I blink at her, not sure how to respond, stomach twisting and turning.
“Not you, silly girl,” says the Child. Her stony gaze goes to Samael. “Him.”
13
9:00 p.m.
What in the actual fuck?
But, like, seriously, what is going on?
I blink at the three giant stone ladies and then at the senior reaper standing beside me. My mouth hangs open, brows kissing the high ass ceiling.
“Sam?” I say.
He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the Fates.
“I am at your mercy,” he says. His voice is deep and resigned, and it echos in the vast atrium chamber.
“Everything is at our mercy,” says the crone.
Sam says nothing. I’m still gaping like an idiot.
“I’m the one who broke your rules,” I say at last.
“You did,” says the child. “But so did he when he tried to stop you from doing what you were fated to do.”
What I was fated to do, as if I’d had no choice in the matter.
Perhaps I hadn’t, but what did such pondering matter now?
Beside me, Samael holds his silence. I have to resist the urge to smack some words out of him. Why try to stop me from saving Rose, why even take the risk of warning me if he’d known it would land him in hot water with these three?
“Are you in love with her?” asks the Child, following up the question with that tinkling giggle.
Finally, he speaks. “I don’t remember what love is,” says Samael.
At last, he looks at me. It is just a glance, a stolen moment immediately lost to the cosmos, but Samael looks at me, and I wonder how I had not seen
