The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(51)

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t mean to—”

Vara rolls her eyes. “Come on, girl. You can fool people who don’t know you that well, but I, along with every other oracle in my generation, have been seeing visions of you from birth. I know that your control is far more advanced than most who can influence their own gifts. I also know that you are trying to do good, when you use it against people. So let’s talk about Isae Benesit, Cisi.”

The way she lays it all bare makes me feel jumpy, and all the words I could say to defend myself get stuck in my throat. I nod, because that’s all I can do to show her that I heard what she said.

“Do you truly care about her?” she asks. “Or are you just manipulating her to accomplish your own aims?”

“My aims—” I choke out.

“Yes, I know—you are only doing what you think is best. But the fact is, you are making decisions about the future of this galaxy unilaterally, so they are your aims, and no one else’s.”

I don’t like to think of what I’m doing with Isae as manipulation. It’s not that simple. If only Vara knew how much Isae worried me, sometimes. How easy it was for her to kill Ryzek, and order an attack on innocents in Voa. How wild her eyes are when she lets herself disappear into anger, and how settled she seems when I draw her back. She needs me.

Which gets me back to Vara’s original question—of whether I really care about her.

“I do care for her,” I say. “I love her. But I worry for her. In a fair world, she would have space to feel her grief, but we don’t really have the time to let her work out what she’s going through on her own, not with a war going on.”

Vara purses her wrinkled lips.

“Perhaps you are right,” she says. “In that case, I must tell you to be careful of the one I’ve seen in some of your futures—the mechanic’s boy. Ast.”

“He senses currentgifts, doesn’t he,” I say. “He always seems to know when I’m using mine, even if I’m being really careful.”

“It seems that way,” Vara says. “And he’s getting more and more suspicious of you. And more and more angry that Isae is not suspicious, I think.”

I nod. “Thank you for the warning.”

“Be careful, girl,” Vara says, catching my hand and squeezing it tightly. A little too tightly. Her pupils are big—most Ograns’ are, since there’s so little light everywhere—but I can see a slim green ring around them that makes up her irises.

“And don’t trust the Othyrians.” She squeezes still harder. “Don’t let her agree to it. Whatever you do.”

I’m not sure what she means, but I know she wants me to nod, so I do.





CHAPTER 26: AKOS


IT WAS LATE THAT night that the oracle finally asked for him—or rather, them, because she wanted to see him and Cyra at the same time.

Earlier, they had fallen asleep tangled up in each other, with light from the plants in the garden casting a soft glow through the curtain Cyra had drawn. The silverskin on one side of her head had been cool against his chest, where she insisted on laying to listen to his heartbeat.

He didn’t know what had come over him, in the garden, pulling her close when he knew it was selfish, that he couldn’t give her what she wanted, at her own insistence. He ought to listen to her, maybe even break things off with her completely, because there was no ridding him of his fate and no way of convincing either of them that things would be the same if he didn’t have death in service to her family to look forward to.

But the longing for her had pierced right through the haze that had settled over his mind the past few weeks, and he was too relieved at feeling something that he hadn’t had the heart to suppress it. And he’d gone on wanting her, even while they struggled closer and closer. Like there just wasn’t enough of her and never would be.

He couldn’t take her hand as they walked—it would only attract the beetles, and he wasn’t eager to have one of them perched on his face again—but he stayed close, so he could almost feel her. Her currentshadows were moving faster, darting across her throat and disappearing under her collar, and he wished he could do more for her than the mediocre painkiller he had given her before they left.

Pary led them to the top of the hill, but not to the large hall lit bright from within—down, to the lower level of the place, where the ceilings sloped too close to the top of his head for comfort, and the floorboards creaked with every step. He had to bend to pass through a doorway, and found himself in what looked like a kitchen. A woman not much older than his own mother stood there, her hands buried in a pile of dough. Her arms were freckled, and her hair was gray and curly, cut short around her head.

She smiled up at them when they walked in, with all the warmth he’d learned not to expect from oracles, who always seemed disconnected and harsh to him, even the falling oracle of Thuvhe, before his death.

“Cyra, Akos, welcome,” she said. “Please, sit.”

She gestured to the bench across the table from her. Akos did as she said, but Cyra stayed on her feet, arms crossed.

“Would you feel more comfortable with busy hands?” she asked Akos. “I know you have an affinity for making elixirs. There is plenty here to chop.”