Page 116 of Unraveling Fate

“Sing!” Vasilios demanded. “Now, Cadenza!”

Her mouth dropped. She almost laughed. Of course that would be the answer. The music had always been the answer. The Fates had led her here, where people could help her learn her gift with the earthsong, but it was her choice to work on the Ferrari. When that choice resulted in Taran waking, it had been her choice to spend time with him, to fall in love with him. It was her desire—her want—to break the curse. But it was through Spinning—the path the Fates had decreed for her—and the jangling of the Thread on her wrist that she’d discoveredhowto break the curse. Pattern and choice, path and want. They wove together, changing each other. Enhancing each other.

The music had always been the answer.

Sing. Unravel the curse.

Her smile faded.

Sing. Unravel the curse. And be consumed.

Because when she sang and unraveled the curse, Vasilios would eat her song. And she would die. Just like Taran’s mother. Cadenza raised her chin. So be it. His curse started because of Eithne’s death, and it would end because of Cadenza’s.

She rolled her shoulders back, straightened her gown, and paced to the head of what should have been the aisle for her wedding. Taran waited at the end of the aisle in a bizarre reversal of the ceremony. The tsunami of his drums washed over her, echoing the lightning and thunder in his eyes. She saw when he recognized her decision on her face.

“No,” he whispered. “Why? Why forhim?” He pointed at Thomas.

“Not for him. For you.” She stroked his cheek, warm and gritty from fighting. “Taran Norroway, you are my fate. And you are my fate becauseI chooseyou to be.”

The earthsong rushed to her voice at her command. She anchored to the world’s heartbeat and drew breath. With one note she Spun a length of Thread and lassoed it to the cursed strand that tied Taran and Thomas.

Vasilios shoved his hostage away and prowled into the field, hunger carving hollows under his eyes.

With the second note, Cadenza hauled on the Thread with her whole soul. The tangle of curse spun like a bobbin, unraveling into an acrid pile hissing on the ground. She kept pulling. She couldn’t stop singing until all of the curse was untied.

Vasilios pried his mouth open, jaw unhinging like a serpent.

With the third note, she expected to die.

A whirlpool of wind sucked at her skin. Taran grabbed her, fighting against the tide flowing to the Silence high priest. The image of her own tapestry shimmered into view, the Threads straining against the wind. One snapped. Two.

The wind cut off all at once, like someone had slammed a window shut. Cadenza fell to her knees, Taran beside her.

Blood seeped from Vasilios’s chest, a quiet river of red. No noise escaped his screaming mouth. He wrenched his gaze between Ruairi, still in the trees, and the sharpened metal protruding from his ribs, his confusion plain on his face.

Reyna yanked her tuning fork out of his chest and kicked the priest to the ground.

“Funny thing about owls in flight. They’re silent.”

Twenty-Eight

20 Sep 2019

The air split in two.

A chasm swirled into existence next to Vasilios’s body. It widened, a great maw swallowing air and sound into its depth. Reyna staggered away from it and ran towards the others, arms shielding her face. The Silence worshippers who were still standing ran to their cars and fled.

Taran was yelling something, but Cadenza couldn’t hear him over the ear-drum-sucking black hole. Her hair whipped her face, obscuring her vision, so that when Vasilios’s corpse began to dissolve, she thought it was a mirage.

But no. His fingertips fragmented, and his palms followed. The chasm ate the pieces. His body exploded into puffs of dust—head, chest, hips—until all of him disappeared into the roaring hole of nothing. The dead cultists crumbled to ash and followed their priest. The tangle of curse flew up from the ground and disappeared after them. The maw clamped its jaws shut and vanished.

Sound returned. The stream down the hill by the bridge. A car horn on Mono Way. Gasping breaths from her friends.

Cadenza clutched Taran’s arm. Reached up to his face. She tried to speak, to tell him the curse was gone, he was free. But her lungs were heaving and her throat was swollen and she couldn’t get the word out.

He knew anyway. His heart pounded strong and his bodhran song ran unrestricted. Taran’s tears ran with hers, and he just nodded his head and pulled her into his arms.

She gulped in a breath. “Is everyone else ok?”