Page 17 of Fortune Fae Academy
“What experiment?” I managed to gasp out through the pain.
Amell’s heavy hand fell on my shoulder. With Roderik keeping me pinned, I couldn’t move away. “Did you think you’re here by mere coincidence, Beta? Perhaps you thought it was a choice between you and Rowan?” He chuckled, the sound a deep, dark one. “How young you are, Sightless one.”
I blinked a few times, as if I needed the reminder that I was technically blind.
In more ways than one, because I hadn’t even stopped to consider that Amell had brought me as part of a more elaborate plan. I had ignorantly assumed it was to watch me squirm while my Omega was mauled by two Alphas spinning out of control.
I was also used to being an insignificant Beta far below the interest of an Alpha like Amell.
Perhaps I was, but then I had gone and killed an Elder.
Just like Roderik.
Amell had us here, together, for a reason. For anexperiment. And whatever it was he wanted from me, he was close to figuring it out.
Idiot,I cursed myself.
The Elder squeezed my shoulder. “I have carefully guarded the purity of the timeline for the majority of my life,” he said wistfully, as if in one fleeting moment all of his years of work had been ruined. And maybe they had been. Almost every member of my mate-circle had performed a rare, Web-defying act. The only one who hadn’t was Rowan, but it didn’t take the ability to read the future to guess the fiery Beta had something up his sleeve.
Like Amell had said, it wasn’t a coincidence that I was here.
It wasn’t a coincidence Rowan and I mated Gina.
Nothing ever was.
After what Gina had just shown me about the nature of the Web, I knew there was no such thing as happenstance.
The Web was so incredibly vast and intricate. Everything had a purpose. A place.A pattern.
Amell worked a symbol in the air, lighting up Dust for me to perfectly see each stroke.
It dawned on me. Amell’s skill came from the patterns I had seen from the zoomed-out perspective of the Web.
Was it a fluke that Amell’s power was rooted in patterns and that was the very thing Gina had revealed to me about the nature of the Web?
As I had learned by now, everything happened for a reason.
“You once had the Shard in your possession,” I guessed.
Amell stopped mid-stroke, momentarily stunned.
I suspected surprise was a rare thing for an ancient Elder who could always see the future.
But I was an anomaly. Something outside of his known universe.
He recovered from his shock with practiced ease, quickly resuming his motions until he completed the pattern.
“Very observant, for one of the Blind,” Amell said as he pressed his palm into the glowing symbol.
“Did she die?” I asked. That question was most pertinent in Gina’s case. “The Omega you removed it from.”
Amell’s nostrils flared. I knew I was edging too close to the truth for his comfort, but I had nothing to lose at this point.
“One of them did,” he said, surprising me with an answer. “I learned not to remove it too early. It killed her and the Shard vanished into the Web along with her soul and her timeline.”
“To be reborn again in a thousand years,” I said. Had I still been attached to the Web, I knew my words would have thrummed with prophecy.
Because it was a prophecy that had already been fulfilled.
