Page 95 of Love and Death
I push myself up onto my hands at the sound of it, still gasping for air as hot tears continue to splash onto the altar. It is only now that I realize I’d been feeling Death’s shadows against my skin.
My grief mixes confusingly with overwhelming joy as Death reaches for me, pulling me flat against his chest to hold me tightly in his arms.
“You’re alive,” I whisper through my tears, tucking my face against him as I wonder how I’m supposed to continue living with the burden of what I’ve just done so heavy upon me.
“I am, little one, and I remember.”
Death holds me in sweet silence, allowing me to feel without rush or judgment, until I finally pull back to look up at him. My heart sings at the sight of him, despite the pain.
His dark eyes soften behind the mask, but something lies deep within them. Something powerful, more ancient and knowing than I’ve ever seen before.
“What do you remember?” I ask quietly.
“Everything,” he says, his gaze piercing. “I remember you. Us. My own death …” He rises from the altar, grabbing me tenderly around my waist to help me down. “I remember the before and the after ... And I remember what was stolen from me.WhoI was before the monsters that call themselves gods and guardians tried to rewrite me.”
My eyes widen as Death’s shadows begin to swirl around the lengths of his cloak.
“Who you were before?” I ask.
“Who he is now,” Hypnos corrects for him, reverently. “He is Fate. He is our beginning and our end. He is the thread that carries us.”
The whole universe seems to still as Death—Fate slowly reaches up, suddenly far taller than I remember, and carefully removes his mask, his skin like moonlight, luminous and otherworldly. Pitch-black hair falls in shadowy waves to frame piercing, all-seeing eyes within a face too beautiful … and yet, too terrifying to possibly describe.
Death has been rewritten.
He is not the same man I saw before, though I can still see a piece of that in him.
Now, he is notonlyDeath.
He is life. Fear. Perfection.
He is … Fate.
He is myeverything.
And I know that I would choose him in this life and all the rest.
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FATE
She stands before me, my salvation. The blessing to my curse. The dawning star to my endless night.
The loophole in the very tapestry meant to end me.
Hazel, my wayward thread.
The reason I remember who I am, and whattheydid.
Howtheyunmade me.
The Fates.
When they asked to be made weavers, to spin life into a tapestry of beauty, I believed they meant to help. And in that foolish belief, I became bound by my own threads. Tied to a single purpose.
They took my name, the first breath of my own being, and cut it from me, knotting my thread into tangles of hate and loss. They took my mercies and named me a monster.
They made meDeath, when I had known life. They whispered poison into the hearts of all that I cared for. They made me a thing to be feared, hated, and forgotten.
