Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 55964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Yet the door was open…
“M-my lord?” I call out. “May I join you?”
His eyes open, and I see the dark, unsettling gaze of the third Spidae. Somehow I knew it was him, but now I have confirmation, and I smile broadly at him.
He flinches at the sight of me.
Oh, dear. “Am I bothering you?”
The Spidae shakes his head and immediately he gets to his feet and the strange, reddish strands melt away. I jerk back in surprise, gasping as the room empties out. He approaches me, and as he does, I notice he won’t look at me. He keeps his gaze averted, first to my dress, and then just anywhere else he can. “What is it you need?”
“I don’t need anything,” I confess. “I simply wished to talk to you.”
“What about?”
I smile to take the sting from my words, lest he think I am pouting. “You’ve been avoiding me, my lord. I wondered if my presence offended you.”
“Offends me? No. No offense.” He blinks and then his gaze flicks around the room. “Happy. Very happy.”
He…doesn’t seem happy. His expression is distant, and he still won’t look at me. “Is there anything I can do for you? To please you?”
I hold my hand out, and he shies away again, flinching backward. Oh. That’s not good.
“Touching,” he murmurs, looking anywhere but at me. “Too much touching. I don’t like it…do I?” He makes a distressed sound in his throat. “You are always smiling at me, Yulenna.”
I am? “Is that bad?” I ask. “Should I not smile at you, my lord?” After a moment, I realize he’s called me by name. It’s the first time any of them have. “You know my name?”
“Know everything about you,” he murmurs, and the sound becomes curiously soft and affectionate. “My soft, sweet-smelling Yulenna.” His gaze goes distant. “You always know how to make me smile. Even after centuries.”
Centuries? I blink in surprise, because I just got here a few days ago with the others. “Do you see the future then, my lord?”
“What will be,” he mutters. “What will be. What could be.”
How fascinating. No wonder he seems disoriented. It must be confusing for him if he’s seeing the future, even right now as he speaks to me. Centuries, though? Does he truly see me living at his side for centuries? Or is he simply seeing some other vision and interpreting it as me? Entirely possible, given that he won’t look at me.
“Will you tell me more about what you see?” I ask him, keeping my voice gentle. “So I can understand?”
“I see everything,” he says, lifting a hand. As he does, the red threads rise up out of the floor around us again, weaving their complex web. “All the fates of all in the world. What can be and what will be. A million futures, spread out before me.” He twists his hand, making a fist, and then lowers it again. The strings vanish once more. “But it is all death.”
I swallow hard at that, a knot forming in my throat. Death? As in, my death? Or everyone’s death? “But you are Fate, right? Not the god of Death?” I thought that was Rhagos, but maybe mortals are wrong about that sort of thing.
“I see deaths. I see possible deaths. I see actual deaths,” he continues. “I see the fate of every person that ever lived unspooling before me.” His expression grows weary. “And I see them aging. I see them withering before my eyes. Everything withers.”
Oh. I remember reaching for him and how he’d panicked. How he’d hated when I touched him. “Do you see me dying?”
He nods, gaze averted. “You rot before my eyes.”
How horrible. “Is that why you don’t want me to touch you? Or why you avoid me?”
The Fate says nothing, but I know the answer anyhow. It’s obvious in the fragile set of his shoulders, the heartache written across his face. He’s so different from the other aspects of his persona. Is it because he’s the one that watches everyone die? No wonder the High Father split them.
I’m filled with curious sympathy and affection for him. He’s obviously miserable, and I can only imagine what it does to his mind. “Is there some way I can make you feel better?”
“No touching,” he says quickly, still not looking at me. “I cannot watch you wither. It hurts me too much.” The god shudders violently, his hands covering his eyes. “Cannot watch the one I love age and die before me…”
Oh.
Oh. At some point in the future, he loves me? My heart warms for this strange, lost man. I want to pull him to my breast and stroke his hair, comforting him. I want to touch him all over and give him the affection he’s clearly starving for. Why is it that the others are so detached when it comes to emotion and yet this one seem to be drowning in them?