Page 133 of Awry
I grab hold of it.
Every single thread, and there are more than three.Chains is meant to walk away from this, maybe even with Presh in tow.
He was always supposed to take her back to her father, but then I intervened in the cafe.
And I’m going to do it again.
The moment before I decide to tear every single one of those threads of destiny away from Chains, they blacken under my hands.
I rip away.
I strain with the effort, though essence, life force, weighs nothing.I don’t stumble, but only because the cu-sith holds me in place.
I do what no Conduit should be able to do.
I snip Chains’s threads.No.I shred them.Completely.Utterly.
I murder him without laying a hand on him, without a weapon.I hold Presh’s future in the forefront of my mind, and I allow the universe to force me to do something I would never have thought myself capable of doing.
I end the very energy that I’m in this world to conduct, to feed, to fuel.
Chains totters on his feet — not knowing he’s already dead.He locks eyes with me.His grasp on Presh loosens, and she tumbles to the ground before him.Next to where Kris lies.
The blackened threads of Chains’s life, of his fate, of his destiny, jump back to me, elastic and snapping harshly.Those snipped threads twine around my forearms.They bite into my flesh, slicing into my bones.
It hurts.
Enough that I struggle not to scream, not to pass out.
Chains keels over, falling face first onto the pavement.
The threads attempting to etch into my skin and bones disintegrate.
Presh looks up at me.Holding herself over Kris and soaked in the blood of her friend, her crush, she gazes at me in utter terror.The red eases from her life force.That energy begins to settle into a multithreaded spiral around her again.
Rath and Rought finally achieve their human forms, rising naked to their feet behind me.Rath lunges past me to scoop Presh up in his arms.Rought goes to DeVille, hastily but carefully checking his neck and back.Then he lifts him gently, confirming that the young shifter is alive.
They both turn to gaze at me with wide eyes, awed more than terrified.Perhaps.
The cu-sith chuckles darkly — emitting an actual sound this time — and pure terror traces up my spine.
Then, pain still streaking through my forearms and radiating up my arms, shoulders, and neck to drill into my brain, I see, feel, nothing more.
Fourteen
I findmyself staring at a wood-paneled coved ceiling.Realizing suddenly that I’m awake and in my childhood bedroom— with no memory of how I got here.
I can feel the shifters nearby without even reaching for them.I can feel Presh.But my room is empty when I finally turn my head to look.Daylight filters around the edges of the drawn curtains.Muta is curled alongside me, between me and the open door to the hall.I’m still wearing the clothing I left the house in last night, minus the boots and my now sure-to-be-ruined cashmere sweater.
Was it last night?I have no idea how much time has passed.
Have I died?Again?
I do feel … hollow.But it’s different than how I feel when the universe resets me.
It’s … wrong.Something has twisted inside me.
My forearms ache, though my skin is unblemished.I look toward the window and the sill covered in what I logically understand are collected memories — the jar of notes, the seashells, the carved wooden box and the broken bracelet.Though I still have no memory of collecting them.The odd hollowness that has settled in the bones of my hands and forearms is a sharper, more painful echo of the emptiness I felt when touching those items.
