What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(54)

Pushing off the stone with my oar, I rowed myself into the center of the canal and let the current lead me out. The ride was smooth, the water a slow glide as it guided me out from the cavern that housed the worst of Mab’s crimes. The fire behind me burned brighter, embers flashing through the air as the Undertaker shoved the first of the human bodies into the flames.

Only when I emerged from the cavern did I draw in a full breath, the fresh air filling my lungs as the boat curved around the river bend. I sailed down-river in silence, left to only my thoughts as the rolling white hills passed me by.

Two centaurs filled their cups in the river, their heads jolting back when my boat came into view. In the distance, the entrance to the Void came into view. Two identical figures loomed overhead, carved into the white marble of the hillside where the river disappeared beneath them. They were an exact replica of the ferryman, cloaked in shadows with hoods that draped down over his forehead. Their arms crossed as they raised them toward one another, swords arching toward the sky.

At their center, two black doors were carved into the limestone of the hill. They were foreboding, unforgiving as they remained shut tight. Only water filtered through the cracks between them.

The ferryman’s boat lay across the narrowest part of the river, bones and skulls hanging off the side as he paced from one side to the other. It was no coincidence that Tar Mesa was located so close to the entrance of the afterlife, not with my father’s ties to it as the God of the Underworld. It was his job to protect the sanctity of such things, to make sure that the two realms did not bleed into one another.

This was where he’d chosen to lay his head at night. Where he’d decided to position himself so that he could do his duties.

I passed between two of the rolling hills, the white sandstone cracking as it fell into the river. The Ferryman looked up as I approached, stopping his pacing, and those golden eyes landed upon me. Estrella’s memory, and the knowledge that this creature I had known for centuries had somehow played a part in the raising of my mate, haunted me.

Had he known that all this time? That each and every day I came to him, waiting for her, he knew exactly who she was? My boat stopped just before his; my oar easing into the water to hold it still as I stood.

Something arched between us, a newfound knowledge that hadn’t been there before. At some point, I might have considered the ferryman very close to a friend.

“Some secrets are better left in the dark,” I said, grasping the coins from my pocket. I let them fall through my fingers, tumbling into the bottom of his boat as he stared at me.

The souls I’d brought passed by his boat finally, waiting at the entrance to the Void. The river behind the doors gleamed with gold as they opened slowly, allowing the souls to continue in their voyage. The ferryman picked up his oar, prepared to usher them to the Void beyond and deliver them to The Father and The Mother if it was their time.

“Do you love her?”

The ferryman stilled, turning back to face me for a moment. Something almost human passed over the gaunt face that remained unnaturally still.

“Your mate is… unique,” he said finally, his voice inhumanly low.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, wanting the answer for the benefit of Estrella.

She’d mourned her father, spent a life grieving for him. If she was nothing more than a duty to the ferryman, a service to the Fates, then she deserved to know the truth. She deserved the opportunity to carve him from her heart once and for all.

The ferryman cast his eyes to the sky, following the path his pet blight cut through the air. The bird landed upon his shoulder, staring back at him with golden eyes as the ferryman nodded finally.

“We did, but that love will not save her from what the Fates have in store,” he said ominously, turning his back on me to signal the end of the conversation.

He rowed his boat through the doors to the Void, and the blight’s eerie golden stare held mine until the gates closed behind them.





17


Estrella


Three days passed.

Three days of healing, of recovering from the snake’s venom in my veins. The worst of the effects had worn off days prior, but the mental fog and exhaustion lingered. Mab left me in peace, likely knowing exactly what consequences the venom could wreak upon a body. It felt like a test, as if she wanted to see exactly how quickly my body could work through it, but the iron collar at my throat slowed everything to a standstill when Malachi had returned me to my rooms that night.

So I slept, and I slept. Until Mab grew tired of waiting, and Nila arrived to prepare me for the day. The blouse and skirt she selected were far more casual than usual.

Nila and I entered the throne room in the middle of the day, with Malachi at our backs. I’d expected it to be empty save for Mab, but the floor to ceiling windows that bordered the edge of the hall were thrown open, casting the bright light of the sun gleaming off the white sand into the space. Fae I’d never seen worked in tandem, grasping the heavy chains from hooks on the wall and lowering the cages from the ceiling.

The stone floor was now littered with the bodies of Mab’s victims. Other Fae worked to pull what remained of the mangled, rotting corpses from those cages to lay them upon the floor. They worked in near silence, the melancholy of such a task pulsing off each of them in waves.

At the back of the throne room, the tallest Fae I’d ever seen stretched toward the ceiling. He dragged a wet cloth over the stone ceiling, cleaning the dirt from it and leaving the rock lighter somehow. I didn’t want to think about what manner of debris had coated the porous surface, or what I inhaled every time I set foot in the room where Mab held court.