Fates by Lanie Bross

Author:Lanie Bross
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-74282-5
Publisher: Random House Children's
Published: 2013-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

12

A barely discernible buzzing floats through the air. Corinthe watches the fireflies in the purple twilight: thousands flicker over the river, mingling with the reflection of the stars on the water.

Sometimes, when she stares long enough, she can’t tell which is which.

Corinthe takes a step closer to the water’s edge. It is forbidden to touch the Messengers. But why? She thinks of the stranger who visited Pyralis once. “Don’t stop asking questions,” he had told her—and now she can’t stop. The question seems to burn a path through her mind, like the hot trails of the shooting stars that blaze across the sky. Why why why? And why do none of the other Fates wonder the same thing?

A strange hunger grows inside her. Hunger. A word she doesn’t even know yet. Why why why? Why can’t I touch the light? Then, suddenly, as though in response to her unspoken question, one of the fireflies darts past her. Before she knows what she has done, her fingers have closed around it like a Venus flytrap—a plant that grows both in Pyralis Terra and in Humana.

For one second, the wings beat against her palm. She’s filled with feelings she has never known, feelings she has no words for yet. Ecstasy. Exhilaration. A sense of flying.

But then the firefly breaks free of her hand and she hears a tiny splash. A marble has fallen into the river. Bobbing along the surface, it starts to float downstream. One of the tarnished marbles. One that was not meant to stay in the river but to be rescued and sorted and delivered. This is what she is designed for, what she does. For all of eternity, she sorts the cloudy marbles from the clear—just like all the other Fates—rescuing the obscure and darkened ones, the ones that have been warped. These contain futures that may not happen on their own. They need help. That’s why she culls them and gives them to the Messengers. There is an order, a set of rules. These are not broken—have never been broken.

Corinthe leaps into the water, feeling the strong pull of the current against her legs. The marble floats closer to the edge of the waterfall. She reaches out. The marble is so close. All she has to do is grab it.

Her bare feet slip on the slick rocks of the riverbed as her fingertips brush against the smooth surface of the marble … and just then, the current sweeps it away from her.

She watches in horror as the marble disappears over the edge of the falls, into the unknown space that surrounds Pyralis Terra.

The water continues to rush around her, but Corinthe can’t move. She is struck with an icy dread. She has lost someone’s destiny.

It might have been a death, or a birth, or a meeting, or a masterpiece. Whatever the story, it is now lost forever.

Suddenly, Corinthe is ripped from the banks of the river, flung into a swirling mass of darkness. She hears screaming. Her

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