Clack.

Tella didn’t like the sound, but it allowed her to view the cavern when the fractured wedge of the wheel rotated her way. Her first peek between the broken crack only lasted long enough to see that sparks now filled the cavern, as if the air was on the verge of catching fire. The tiny flames danced around the man, making the gold on his red military coat sparkle. He stood right in front of her mother.

Paloma looked much smaller than before as she lifted her face toward him expectantly.

“I feared I’d seen you for the last time,” she said.

The wheel continued to rotate, obstructing Tella’s view once more. When the crack reached Tella again, the intruder was stroking her mother’s hair. And her mother was gazing up at him with adoration in her eyes, as if she’d been waiting for this clandestine meeting even more than Tella had been longing to reunite with her.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

“Gavriel.” Paloma said his name as if it were a secret that only she’d been told. “I’ve missed you so much. I hoped you’d come back to these ruins.”

The wheel continued to spin. When the fragmented piece came around again, the man’s hand was in her mother’s hair.

“You’re as beautiful as I remember,” he said. Then his lips pressed to hers, and Tella swore all the flames in the cavern surged brighter. The sparks in the air glowed like stars. Tella could feel their heat from behind the wheel.

Tella was going to be ill. She wanted the wheel to stop, to block her from seeing anything else, but instead it began turning faster, as if it was enthralled by the kiss. Tella prayed to the saints for the embrace to end, or that she’d at least regain her ability to move, to fully block it out. But her limbs remained numb and the kiss went on, intimate and burning and so, so very wrong.

Clearly, her mother hadn’t come here to murder anyone. She was here because she wanted to be with this man more than she wanted to be with her daughters. Tella might have felt a knot in her stomach if she’d had more sensation in her body.

“My memories of you did not do you justice.” His lips had moved to her jaw.

“I’m glad you missed me, too,” she said.

“I thought of you every day.” His mouth trailed to her ear, but what should have been a whisper echoed throughout the entire chamber. “I pictured all the ways I would get my revenge against you.”

Click.

Click.

Clack.

This love story had just gone very wrong. For several tense seconds Tella’s heart raced. She couldn’t hear anything other than the wheel until her mother’s strong voice grew louder when she said, “Gavriel, I made a mistake.”

“You forced me back inside that cursed Deck of Destiny once you learned I was a Fate. That’s a very intentional error, Paradise.”

God’s blood and teeth.

This man—this Fate—had been trapped in the cards too. Her mother had just kissed him. What was she doing? She’d pushed away her own daughter so she could cling to one of the monstrous immortals who only saw humans as pawns and fragile sources of entertainment. Tella didn’t know which Fate he was. He could have been the Assassin, the Fallen Star, the Poisoner, the Apothic, or Chaos. It didn’t matter—all of them were demons.

Tella wanted to scream at her mother to leave. But Tella’s tongue was still thick. Her lips were numb. All she could feel were a few rebel tingles, and even if her mouth had moved, even if she’d warned her mother, Tella doubted Paloma would have responded. Her mother already knew the man before her was a Fate, she probably knew which one he was and what terrible powers he had, and she didn’t appear to care.

Another spin of the wheel showed Paloma leaning into the Fate again. “I was warned that you’d kill me to keep yourself from falling in love with me,” Paloma said, her voice much more tender than the way she’d spoken to Tella earlier. “I panicked, Gavriel. I did what I thought I had to, to defend myself. We both do what it takes to survive; that’s one of the things we’ve always had in common. But I’ve regretted that choice ever since. Why do you think I’m here right now?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” he said.

Tella had met Fates before, the Prince of Hearts and the Undead Queen. This Fate’s voice was even colder, his presence more commanding and powerful, the little flames around him sparking with his every word. But Paloma didn’t pull away.

“There’s nothing to figure out. I’m here because I want to be with you.” She rose up on her toes.

The wheel whirled, blocking out what happened next, but the stretch of silence told Tella they were kissing again.

“Do you still want revenge?” Paloma gasped finally. “Or do you want to be with me, too?”

“Maybe revenge can wait.” His mouth returned to her mother’s.

Tella started to close her eyes; she couldn’t watch any more of this. But just as she was about to stop looking, she caught a glimpse of silver in her mother’s hands as Paloma pulled out a knife and quickly dug it into the Fate’s heart.

A roar echoed across the cavern.

Tella could have cheered. But she wasn’t sure what her mother was doing. Fates were immortals; if they died, they just came back to life. But maybe her mother knew something Tella did not. She held her breath as the wheel came around yet again.

But the Fate wasn’t lying on the ground or falling to a temporary death. He was standing, staring at Paloma as if she’d truly surprised him. Then, in a flash, too quick for Tella to see, his massive hand pulled out the dagger and thrust it into Paloma’s chest and twisted.

She let out a sound that Tella knew she’d hear in her nightmares forever. It rocked the cavern walls as Tella tried to scream too. But she couldn’t even manage to whisper. Her lips were still tingling with numbness. There was a similar prickling sensation in her limbs, but it wasn’t enough to move them.

She tried to crawl on her belly, out from behind the wheel and somehow save her mother, but all Tella could do was watch.

The wheel of death slowed to a crawl.

Click …

Click …

Clack …

Everything had been moving too fast, and now it was all going too slow.

When the wheel finished its turn, Paloma was totally still on the ground, while the bleeding Fate looked down on her.

Get up! Get up! Get up!

Tella finally got her fingers to move. Her toes were gaining feeling too.

But her mother wasn’t moving at all.

Tella dug her fingers into the ground until they started to bleed. But it wasn’t enough to propel her forward.

Even the wheel had ceased spinning. The Fate fell to his knees, but her mother remained on the ground.

Tella managed to crawl forward an inch. She wasn’t ready to give up yet. Her mother couldn’t be dead. Her mother was too strong to die. Tella had fought too hard to lose her. The story wasn’t supposed to end this way.

I will rip your arms from your chest! “You sonofa—”

A hand clamped over her lips. Cold and sweet, like apples and Fated magic.

“Quiet, my love,” Jacks whispered. “There’s nothing you can do for her now except keep yourself alive.”

His cool fingers stayed in place until after Gavriel finally died from the wound her mother had inflicted. His massive body fell to the ground. The cavern should have filled with silence, but Tella could hear the pieces of her heart as it shattered.

12

Donatella

Tella wished that time would stop. For years she’d divided her life into two periods: When Her Mother Had Been There and After Her Mother Had Left. Now her mother was dead. But Tella didn’t want to use this moment as a measure of time. She didn’t want time to move forward at all. She wanted time to freeze, like her unmoving limbs, but even they were regaining echoes of feeling.

She couldn’t walk, but she managed to crawl across the cavern’s granite floor to her mother’s body. But that’s all it was, a body. When Paloma had been in her enchanted sleep, her face had still possessed color, her chest had moved up and down. Tella had once thought she was still as a corpse, but she wasn’t—until now.

“At least he stabbed her instead of burning her to death with his powers,” Jacks said. “Fire’s the most painful way to die.”

“That’s not helping,” Tella muttered.

“Well, I’m not really the comforting sort.” Jacks’s cool arms slipped beneath Tella’s back as he picked her up from the ground.

“Put me down,” Tella said. Jacks was a Fate, and the last thing she wanted was help from someone like him.

Jacks huffed a sigh. “If I leave you here, you’ll die like your mother when Gavriel comes back to life. Or another Fate will just find you.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Jacks flashed his dimples, narrow lips parting into a sharp smile that turned him into the beautifully cunning Prince of Hearts that she’d been fascinated with as a child. “I just prefer torturing you myself.”