Page 114 of Unraveling Fate

“Brilliant.” Taran grinned and ran his tongue over his canines. They remained human sized, but his eyes glowed in the darkness. “I haven’t had a proper brawl in ages. I’m surprised they didn’t bring more though.” He shrugged. “Ah, well. Have to make do.” He cupped Cadenza’s face in his hands. “Stay to the side. I’ll make sure they don’t reach you?—”

A cultist charged towards them, brandishing a knife in the air. Cadenza gathered the music, aimed, and let go. The ground in front the charging man burst in a spray of earth and turf, throwing him backward.

Taran laughed and planted a kiss on her mouth. “You, Cadenza Cavalieri, are bloody amazing. Marry me in five minutes?”

He spun on his heel to rip another Silence follower off the ground. Reyna pulled her hammer off her belt and crashed into the fight after him. Cadenza backed towards the arch, the Guardians forming a line between her and the attackers.

The Audi zigzagged through the fight, trying to run down the Guardians but Ruairi jumped onto the side of the car, punched through the window and yanked the driver out through the broken glass. Taran slammed one fist into the ground to knock over a line of cultists with a wave of earth and shot a bolt of lightning into the Audi with the other.

Suspicion slithered between Cadenza’s shoulder blades. This was too easy. Taran fought, his face unconcerned, enjoying himself even, but what he’d said gave her pause. Whyhadn’tthey brought more people to attack with? The Silence had been enough in the past to defeat the Guardians and kill Taran’s mother and the Crown. She scanned the edges of the field, looking for some kind of trick. They had to be up to something. This one attack couldn’t be their whole plan.

A woman ran at her, face as expressionless as the men at the garage, and her feet quiet on the ground. Cadenza knockedher back with earthsong. The Thread jangled on her wrist again as she did so, and the sonar-like waves rolled over the scene before her. The battle clamor, the earthsong under her feet, the melodies of tree, stream, wind, and stars, even Taran’s drums all slowed and merged into a deep gong. Tapestry visions superimposed themselves over each person in the clearing.

She stared, hypnotized. Patterns emerged in each tapestry. A similar pattern ran through each of the Guardian’s tapestries, different from those of the humans they fought. The shapes and colors shared by each of the four tapestries marked their destiny as Guardians. But differences marked their cloths as well. Variations.

Cyrus tackled two cultists, and she focused on him. Individual Threads stood out to her now. She picked one and traced its path. The Thread started as part of the general Guardian pattern, but then curved and twisted, varying the pattern. Another Thread started a dark blue at the beginning but changed color dozens of times as it wove through the pattern, adding vibrancy to the picture.

Creating a different picture than the one at the beginning of the tapestry.

She sucked in a breath, heart pounding, and scanned the others. Everyone, Guardian and Silence, had a basic pattern running through their tapestry. An overarching design. But that design was changed by individual Threads.

Cadenza shook her bracelet of Thread to send out fresh sonar waves and pushed her vision to zoom in on the weaving. The pattern remained, but the weaving itself was loose. About that one thing, Vasilios had been right.

The Fates had left space between the Threads.

And not only space, but flexibility. The weaving curved and undulated, adjusting to the variations where the Threads changed direction or color—adjusting to where a person madeachoice. The Threads of choice not only changed but enhanced the original pattern, elaborating on it and filling it with color that was absent at the start of the weave.

Despite the violent work in front of her, Cadenza leapt for joy, pumping her fist in the air. That missing third note of the chord pealed like a bell, resolving Fate and chaos. The Fates did not dictate every human move. Humans did not flail about in a sea of coincidence and random chance.

Our choices change the pattern.She sang for the beauty of it.

Taran, where was Taran? She had to tell him her discovery. She found him in the fight, three Silence thugs on him at once. They didn’t stay on him for long, and she almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

Picking her way through the field, she swept her vision over Taran’s tapestry, wondering if she could pinpoint the spot where she’d proposed and he’d chosen hope over despair. Greens and browns and storm cloud blues wove through his tapestry but then?—

That can’t be right.

Partway down the tapestry the Threads tangled into a muddy mess. Angry strands strangled the natural Threads. A mass like swamp water and rotting fungus was lashed onto the weaving, obscuring the patterns and warping the shape.

She’d found the curse.

Reyna blocked a punch,shifted to owl-form, flapped out of reach, and shifted back. Wolf-Cyrus ripped out her attacker’s throat. He switched to human form. “You’re holding back, Reyna. You can’t do that.”

“I’m not here to kill people!” she protested.

“Well, they’re here to kill you. Are you going to let them?” Cyrus asked. Another blank-faced man lunged at them, and Cyrus aimed a kick at his face, sending him spinning. “Or let them kill those we protect?”

“No!” She ducked and a cultist’s fist flew through the air where her face had been. Reyna stepped in and crushed the cultist’s shoulder with her hammer. The man went down with a soundless shriek. “But I can’t just kill people!” She gagged, the sensation of her hammer on bone sticking to her skin like sludge.

“We have a job to do.” Cyrus beat off one more Silence. The cultists made no noise as they went down, and Reyna shuddered. The quiet was so freaky. And their blank faces. It was like being attacked by zombie robots.

She felt the other Guardians around her. They didn’t share thoughts like in the cave, but she had a picture in her head of where in the battle the others were, a general idea of their intentions. Already she thought of them as her people, her boys. Her pack. No way could she go back now; shewasa Guardian and that was what she wanted to be.

“But destruction can’t be my only job, Cyrus,” she half-pleaded. Another zombie lunged at Cyrus’s back. Reyna kicked its knees out and pinned its arms behind its back.

Cyrus turned and rammed a fist into the cultist’s face, knocking the man out. “I’ve already seen you do things outside the realm of Guardian normal, Reyna. I don’t think you need to worry about having only one kind of job.”

Taran howleda laugh as bone crumpled beneath his fist. Fates, but he’d missed this.