Page 25 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
’m?ir?
(noun) a person’s fate or destiny
In Greek mythology, the three Moirai spin the threads of Fate. Men, women, and gods submit to them, forced to accept Fate as Destiny.
Moira is the idea that each person possesses a predetermined course of events that shapes his or her life. It is the idea that some events are inevitable—a person’s fate (every decision leading to the present) and their destiny (the future) is not always in his or her control.
Moira reminds us some things happen no matter how hard we fight them.
Emery, 22; Nash, 32
Burn.
It crept up my fingers, down the side of my wrist, and across my palm.
My fingers flexed. Straight. Curled knuckles. Straight. Fist. I did this eight times until I could pick up the needle and thread again without wanting to chop off my hands.
I would withstand this torture every hour of the day if it meant I’d created something tangible. Something that couldn’t be taken from me. Something I could latch onto and call mine.
Five yards of curtain laid in front of me. The fabric pen sat uncapped beside my thigh. I dropped the needle and thread, picked up the pen, and dragged it across the fabric in a sweeping motion.
Empty.
I shook the pen and tried again.
Still empty.
“Motherfucker.”
I didn’t have money for a new one, and my next paycheck didn’t come for a week.
“What happened?”
I took Reed off speaker and pressed the phone to my ear. “Pen’s out of ink. No big deal. It’s a recreational project.”
All my projects were recreational, including this curtain-turned-peplum-dress. I had zero design gigs lined up and a stack of unpaid bills I hid in my freezer so I didn’t have to see them. Every time I thought of the bills, I was tempted to dip into my trust fund. I never caved. That, and Mother dangled stipulations over my head like poisoned mistletoe.
The tension in my neck was another sign I needed to get my shit together, or I’d die of a heart attack before I turned twenty-three. Thanks to shitty construction and my inability to afford AC bills, the heat sweltered in here despite the cool fifty degrees outside.
It was always either too cold or too hot in my two-hundred-square-feet studio, but at a hundred bucks a month for rent, I had no reason to complain. And no super around to complain to.
My phone dinged with a message from the Eastridge United app.
Benkinersophobia: I finally looked up Durga. A goddess of war? Please, tell me you have a sari you roleplay in.
The snort slipped out before I could stop it. The Eastridge Fund had assigned Ben as my anonymous pen pal three years ago. I shouldn’t have signed up for the app. I wasn’t a victim. I was the daughter of the victimizer.
But I’d been lonely and a little drunk, two dollars short of my utility bill, and clinging to a torn quilt for warmth.
Desperate for comfort, to put it bluntly.
I’d meant to stop. Truly. But Ben turned out to be something I was in low supply of—a friend. Sometimes, we felt like one mind in two bodies. Then, one night when the flirtation transformed into something more dangerous, we’d made each other come with nothing more than dirty messages. And, well, that was a rabbit neither of us could put back in the hat.
I shot a reply to Ben through the
app.
Durga: You waited three years to look up my username? I Google’d Benkinersophobia day one.
