This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(29)

The sisters’ gaze swept over Circe and then me. Three sets of inhuman eyes watched us carefully.

“Descendants of Hecate,” Lachesis said. She walked to the spinning wheel and stared at the glowing threads. “What would you have us do?”

Dr. Kent went to one of the surrounding alcoves and pulled from it a wooden chest the size of a shoebox. She handled it like it was fragile, but as she closed the gap between us and opened the top in front of me, it was only filled with more of the same string that was stuffed into the rock-cut shelves. Some strands glowing, others dull and nearly disintegrated.

“These are the threads I have spun for your family since Medea’s time,” Dr. Kent said.

I stared into the box, and as terrified as I was, I couldn’t help but feel a swell of fascination.

“Did you know that Medea and Absyrtus were the only children Hecate ever brought into this world?” Dr. Kent asked. “They were precious to her. And Medea was so talented. Gods. She was so skilled with poisons. She could craft a concoction that would kill a man over weeks, months even—extend the suffering as long as she liked. She was much like her own mother in that way. None of the stories save the one I penned were anywhere near the truth. They only served to soften her, to make her into something broken and spiteful—murderous. It’s a shame I didn’t have a chance to record more, foolish as it was. I could spend a hundred pages telling you of the ways in which Medea cut down the people who betrayed her. She was ruthless when it came to the protection of her family—and her garden.”

My heart ticked up. “The garden? Is it on Aeaea?”

Dr. Kent tilted her head and shrugged one shoulder. “Who’s to say? But that would be a tale worth telling, wouldn’t it?”

I wondered if part of their covenant or whatever it was that kept them from interfering with mortals also made them unable to give a straight answer to a simple question.

Dr. Kent plucked a short dull thread from the box and held it up.

“Selene Colchis,” Lachesis said in a raspy exhale. “Thirty threads.”

Atropos reached into the folds of her dress and took out a pair of glinting gold shears. “Gone.” The blades made a gentle clicking sound as she opened and closed them.

I sucked in a breath and held it as Dr. Kent picked up another dull string.

“Thandie Greene.” Lachesis pulled a length of thread from the wheel. “Forty-one threads.”

Atropos opened and closed her shears but said nothing.

I thought of Hecate having to watch everything that had happened to her children, forbidden to interfere though it was clear she had at least tried. She was a goddess that these other beings seemed to have a certain reverence for, but I’d looked into her eyes and seen something familiar, something human—the unmistakable mask of grief. My chest felt like it would cave in. I struggled to find a rhythm in my breathing that wouldn’t make me pass out.

“Enough,” Marie said, her voice little more than an angry growl. “What’s the damn point?”

Dr. Kent—Clotho—and her two sisters turned to Marie with eerily similar expressions.

Dr. Kent plucked a string from the box. It was thicker than the others. As big around as my thumb.

“Marie Morris.” Lachesis eyed the string. “I continue to add threads to your unnaturally long life.”

Atropos swept over and held up her shears. She positioned the string between the blades and closed them. A cry escaped me, and Marie flinched away, but the string would not be severed.

“I’d like to cut it,” Atropos said. “Maybe someday soon I’ll get the chance.”

Marie tilted her chin up. “You been swimming around in that sewage water too long.” The darkness in her eyes had bled into the skin of her eyelids and down onto the high planes of her cheeks. Atropos looked genuinely stunned.

“Why are you showing us these?” Circe asked.

“You said you wanted to know if you’d come out of your situation unscathed,” Dr. Kent said. “I’m showing you what you asked to see.” Her tone was cold, almost angry.

Atropos huffed. “Clotho, you are obsessed.”

Dr. Kent lowered her eyes. “I’m fascinated. There is a difference.”

“Not from where I’m standing, there isn’t,” said Lachesis as she stared at her sister. “What is it about them that enraptures you so?”

Dr. Kent’s expression grew tight, and she clasped her hands together in front of her. “A great many things.” She locked eyes with me. “That Hecate’s line still exists. That Jason’s line does as well. That even after all this time the blood of the gods is still powerful enough to give you these … gifts.” She glanced down at my feet where a slick of green algae had spread out all around me.

“Jealousy, then?” Marie asked. “That’s what it is?”

The three sisters whipped their heads in Marie’s direction. She didn’t look away, but instead stared Dr. Kent right in the face.

“That’s exactly what it is, huh?” Marie tilted her head like she was thinking very hard about something. “You had a family once? Or maybe you never did, but you wanted one? It’s gotta be something like that. And then Hecate has this family that has managed to last for so long, and all you have are these Ninja Turtles over here.” She shot Atropos and Lachesis a wicked grin, and even though I was pretty sure any one of them could have killed me right then and there, I had to hold back a smile. “Y’all live in this sewer, and I’m not gonna lie, it smells like ass. I’d be bitter if I was you, too.”