FATE

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  I gazed beyond this peak and my keen Sidhe eyesight showed me others, standing on other mountains, watching from afar, lending their presence to this moment and this event.

  “We have gathered. We are here. Tonight, we welcome home a daughter. With this ceremony, we honor her. We honor the blood she carries and the connection it shares with our own. We honor her as a child of this world, ready to become an adult. We come here to offer her our acceptance and to accept hers of our ways.”

  I'd expected something that involved a little less honoring and a little more threatening, but still—as far as I'd been able to tell—nothing in Eze's words had been a question or a request. There simply wasn't an option to decline their ways or their honor, to tell Eze that while I'd never forswear this place, this land, these mountains, she could take her connection and shove it.

  “She is Sidhe.” Drogan spoke the words. Apparently, his soliloquy was significantly shorter than Eze's.

  “She is Sidhe.” Every person on the mountain, save for Delia, Annabelle, and Zo, repeated Drogan's words, and the effect was so massive that even though there was no echo, and the words died soon after they were spoken, the timbre and volume of the collective voices of the Sidhe in those short seconds was enough to make me wonder if the sound of it would ever stop ringing in my ears. It was as if my brain could not comprehend the vastness of the sound, so it parsed it in stages, dragging out the noise long after it was gone from the air.

  “Bailey, you are welcome at the Seelie Court.” Eze took over speaking again. I opened my mouth to tell her exactly what she could do with her welcome, but no sound came out. I tried again, and she inclined her head slightly, as if to say “nuh-uh-uh,” before continuing with her formal invitation to join her court. “There is a lightness in you, a desire for things to be good and right and pure. You were made to stand in the sun, and if you swear fealty to the Court of Light, you need never fear darkness again.”

  “Bailey, you are welcome at the Unseelie Court,” Drogan said, and as he spoke, the scenery around us flickered and changed, until it appeared as though we were standing in the caverns deep in the Otherworldly earth. “You long for depth and truth and have learned to look past appearances. You have danced in our darkness and seen its beauty. You recognize cruelty and could not live in a world in which it is passed off as right. Swear your fealty to the Court of Darkness, and the secrets of the shadows will be yours.”

  As he finished delivering his speech, the world around us righted itself, and we were standing on the mountain again.

  Lame, Zo opined silently. Seriously, who's writing their dialogue?

  I smiled, and Drogan took that as an indication that his words somehow resonated with me. If he'd opened his mind to it at all, he probably could have heard what Zo was silently saying, anyone here probably could have, but to them, my friends were little more than leverage, and they didn't bother opening their minds to the leverage's thoughts.

  “Adea. Valgius.” Eze spoke their names, and the two of them stepped forward.

  “You are our daughter,” Adea said. “Blood of our blood, heart of our hearts.”

  “You are our child,” Valgius continued, his voice oddly stiff, as if these were words he didn't want to be saying in the least. “We welcome you to adulthood and bid you choose according to what your blood and your heart tell you.”

  “Let the land counsel you,” Eze said.

  “Let the mountains and the depths implore you,” Drogan added.

  Let the waters guide you. Let them cleanse you of all influence and free from your mind the solution that you seek.

  Morgan. She was here. She was part of this, and nobody knew it but me.

  “Bailey of the Sidhe, this is your moment. This is your Reckoning. Choose wisely, child, for when the choice is made, you won't be one any longer, and the words you speak will bind you through eternity.” Eze and Drogan delivered that line together, and then there was silence.

  If my words were binding, I had to think of a way to phrase them very, very carefully. I might only get one shot at this, and until I knew what to do, until the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, I wouldn't say anything or choose at all.

  As seconds stretched into minutes, the silence became louder, more obtrusive, and even though I concentrated on keeping my mind clear, on following Morgan's dictate and reaching out for the lakes and rivers that ran through this world and into my own, I couldn't ignore the mounting tension all around me.

  Finally, Eze inclined her head toward my friends, and instantly, they were surrounded by Sidhe, each of them caught in an uncompromising hold.

  Life here can be unpleasant for humans, Eze said silently, unwilling to speak aloud. It becomes too much for them. The colors and sights and sounds of our world beat at their senses until they are dull, and the land will feed off of their life forces until they waste away, losing the will to breathe air whose taste they cannot comprehend.

  Mortals cannot resist the thrall of our people. Drogan added his mind-voice to Eze's. Our voices will haunt them until they'd gladly claw off their own ears for the honor of hearing us speak again. They'll tear off their eyelids so that they can gaze upon our beauty unfettered by something as human as blinking. They will be bewitched and reduced to puppets, playthings, pets.

  They will be used. Both monarchs spoke at once.

  Choose, Eze told me. We'll keep them here until you do. They'll fade, slowly at first, but within a year, they won't know or recognize you, and you won't be able to look at them.

  Choose, Drogan said. Either you leave here tonight or they do, but you cannot have it both ways.

  Water, I thought. Running water. Blue-green lakes, the river under my feet as I run across it.

  Blood.

  That was the thought the waters sent me, and the mountains and caverns and land echoed it in my mind.

  Blood. That was my connection to this place. Sidhe blood ran in my veins. Once upon a time, I'd spilled Alecca's, and through that, I'd come to take her place. Tattoos made of Sidhe blood had once given my friends temporary powers, and it was my blood through which my connection to this place ran.

  My blood and the waters.

  My blood and the land.

  My blood and the mountains.

  My blood and the depths.

  Again and again, that was the answer pounded into my head. Everywhere I turned in the labyrinth of my mind, there it was.

  Blood.

  My blood was the reason there was an imbalance. What had Annabelle called it? Osmosis? Something about there being one Fate in my world, and two in the Nexus; one Sidhe on Earth and countless in the Other-world. I was half human and half Sidhe, and the only way to close the barrier, to be both at once instead of lingering in between, to be balanced instead of liminal, the only way to keep the balance between the worlds was to even things out.

  Blood.

  And that's when I knew.

  Once I begin to speak, can they interrupt me? I sent the question to Adea and Valgius, who didn't dare reply in mind-speak, but shook their heads. I'd suspected as much. This was a ceremony, and the Sidhe were all about the ritual.

  Choose, Drogan and Eze urged me, and so I did.

  “I will make my choice,” I said. “I will pledge. I will be Reckoned.”

  Eze nodded, and the Sidhe guarding my friends stepped back. My word was binding. I'd said I'd make my choice, and I would. I'd said I would pledge, and I would. This was my Reckoning, and I was ready.

  “Delia. Annabelle. Zo.” I spoke my friends’ names with the same solemnity with which Eze and Drogan had delivered their speeches. All around me, eyebrows shot up at my words. Clearly, this wasn't what anyone had been expecting.

  “You're my friends, my family, the other half of myself. For the past couple of months, I've been wondering what I was going to do without you next year, and I couldn't help but feel that without our friendship, our connection, I didn't know who I was.”

  Zo opened her mouth—pro
bably to tell me I was an idiot—but no words came out. They were as silent as I'd been before Eze and Drogan had yielded the floor to me, and it occurred to me that maybe right now I was the only one who actually could speak, King and Queen included.

  “Earlier today, I was running through the Other-world, and I can't even describe the feeling. It's everything. You guys and me and this world and every sensation you could possibly imagine, blending together and crossing over to something new. And it occurred to me that I've spent all this time wondering where I belong and where I'm going to belong once we graduate, and I never once realized that it doesn't matter where I am. It doesn't matter where we go to college. It doesn't matter if we're on opposite coasts or in different worlds. You are in me. You are part of me. And my choice here, right now, is to be part of you.”

  With those words, I reached for my necklace. For the first time since Morgan had given it to me, I took it off and slowly, deliberately, I held up the pendant. Its dull, silver gleam wasn't anything compared to the skin of the other Sidhe, but every pair of eyes was locked onto it. I held up my left palm, and with my right hand, I angled the pendant toward it. Annabelle realized what I was doing, and her eyes grew very wide just before I pressed the razor-sharp edge of the pendant into my flesh and forced it to cut mercilessly through the length of my palm. As the razor moved, blue-green blood welled up on my hand.

  In the mirror, it was red.

  “Part human,” I said. “Part Sidhe. Somebody once told me that the power was in the blood, that our connection to this world was in the blood.” I turned toward my friends. With shaking hands, Annabelle unclasped her necklace and mimicked my actions, slicing her own palm open. I touched my hand to hers, allowing her blood to run into my wound and mine into hers.

  “My power. My blood. Our connection,” I whispered.

  Delia was lightning quick with her clasp, and Zo didn't even bother with it at all, ripping the necklace off instead.

  “My power. My blood. Our connection.”

  I repeated the words, once for Delia and once for Zo. The necklace grew hotter and hotter in my hand as my friends and I shared blood, and in my mind, a tiny buzz grew into something louder, until the sound of rushing water in my ears made it out of my mouth in the form of a spell.

  “To you I call,

  My three of three.

  My blood in yours

  And yours in me.

  Through this change,

  The balance holds.

  The barrier righted,

  The bridge refolds.

  I give this gift

  With lake and sea,

  River and water,

  So mote it be.”

  The moment the last word left my mouth, each of our wounds exploded into light and disappeared, and when my eyes recovered from the explosion, I took in the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

  My friends were standing on Mount Olympus, just as they'd been a moment before, but now they were sparkling, diamonds sewn into their skin with the power of my spell, their hair glowing not one color, but two.

  I was in them. They were in me. And all four of us were Sidhe.

  “How dare you?” Eze's voice was low in pitch, but big on volume. “You would defile your birthright, you would share what you have no right to claim in the first place? That your blood is muddied with mortality is something we have forced ourselves to overlook. That you would dilute it further and willingly take on more humanity to give these abominations a portion of your power is an insult that we will not bear.”

  Drogan did not follow the Queen of Light in her display of emotion, but rather spoke calmly and coolly. “You said you would pledge,” he said. “You have not. To be Reckoned means to choose between the courts and to align yourself with one of the ancient lines of power. You cannot pledge to your friends.” He spat out the last word like it was an obscenity. “Your word is binding. You must pledge, and as they carry your blood, they will be bound by your decision. We offered you a chance to choose your path. Now you will be choosing your end—and theirs, for as my sister said, this is an insult that we will not bear.”

  That wasn't exactly the way I'd planned on this going. I'd been so sure that this was the solution that it didn't even occur to me to wonder what would happen after I'd shared my blood. It had seemed so perfect: instead of having one half-Sidhe in the mortal realm, we'd have four, which would perfectly balance the fact that the other two Fates lived in this one. Beyond that, I was hoping that making my decision would right my own imbalance, which would put the barrier back up full force, and that meant no more visits from Aphrodite, the Furies, et al. Plus, if my friends had Sidhe blood, I wouldn't have to worry about Eze and Drogan's ominous warnings about what happened to mortals who lived too long in this realm.

  See? Perfect.

  Only not, because if swearing loyalty to my friends didn't count as pledging, that meant that I still had to bind myself to one of the rulers of the Otherworld, and that, apparently, meant bloody death for my entire group.

  Way to go, Bailey.

  “You can't kill her!”

  At first, I thought someone was sticking up for me, but when I located the source of that statement, I found myself staring at Xane, who was looking at Delia.

  “Another one?” Zo asked Delia. “Do you have to rack up boyfriends everywhere we go?”

  “Silence!” Drogan yelled.

  For a second, he had exactly what he'd asked for, but then a melodic voice spoke from somewhere behind me.

  “You always were rather dramatic.” With those seemingly benign words, the voice's owner began walking toward us, and the crowd of Sidhe parted for her. “Hello, brother.”

  Remember what I said about not liking Morgan? Zo said silently. Forget that. Lady has a heckuva sense of timing.

  Personally, I could have done with Morgan coming before death threats had been issued, but at this point, I was too entranced by the interaction between the three most powerful Sidhe to care.

  Eze refused to acknowledge Morgan's presence. Drogan glared at her and hissed something in a language I didn't understand.

  “It's been a long time since I stood on this mountain,” Morgan said. “Many millennia have gone by in the human world since I've come here to watch another choose.” She smiled. “In fact, I haven't been here since my own Reckoning, the day my brother, sister, and I came into power and split our world among the three of us. They demanded your fealty, divided you between them. I chose a different path. I became one with our waters and, through them, the waters of the mortal world. I've spent these years in both worlds, allowing the courts their will in most things.”

  “You have no place here,” Eze said. “You have no power to undo what has already been done. The child agreed to pledge. Her word is binding. She will fulfill it, or the blood in her veins will turn against her and she will plead with us for an easier death.”

  Okay, the Sidhe seriously needed to be more specific when they told someone that their word was binding, because I'd had no idea what I was getting myself into.

  “The child has already pledged,” Morgan said. “You just weren't listening closely enough. ‘I give this gift, with lake and sea, river and water, so mote it be.’ ” Morgan somehow managed to make jovial look elegant. “She didn't pledge to the mountain or the caves. She pledged to the waters. In other words, she pledged to me.”

  I did? Could I even do that?

  “She can't do that!” Eze said.

  Drogan expanded upon his sister's objection, loathing oozing out of his voice. “You don't have a court. You chose to sequester yourself. To live in both worlds rather than allow anyone in this world to bind themselves to you. Remember?”

  “And it surprises you that I would choose to begin my court with a child who belongs to both worlds? It is my right to have one. It has always been my right, and I have never forsworn it. Bailey has pledged herself, and her friends, to me, and I have accepted them. Bailey's word has been fulfilled; she has b
een Reckoned, and thus it will be.”

  Delia couldn't help herself. Feeling safer with Morgan here, she spoke up for the first time since the Reckoning had begun. “Take that!” Then she turned to Xane and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like “Call me.”

  “We will wage war on your so-called court. With four half-breeds, what hope do you have of standing against all of us?”

  “Make that five.” James stepped forward. “Anyone up for a double Reckoning? I'm suddenly feeling ready.” Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to me and held his hand out. It took me a second to realize what he was reaching for.

  My necklace.

  I gave it to him and, with a huge smile plastered across his face, he cut his palm. I felt the searing pain in my own, and when I looked down, I realized that my wound had been reopened. I glanced at my friends and found them bleeding as well.

  “Well,” James said, “I'm not that great at the rhyming thing, but I pledge myself to Morgan's court and freely share my blood with these lovely ladies.” He winked at me, and for the first time since I'd discovered the truth, he seemed more like the James I'd met than the one who'd betrayed me. He followed the wink with a shy smile, and in that second, he seemed like the Alec I'd partway fallen for as well. “Here goes nothing.”

  His palm touched mine, but somehow it felt like our lips were touching instead, even though a blood transfusion was a pretty weird version of a first kiss. As James moved past me to my friends, Axia stepped forward, Lyria at her heels. They didn't speak any words out loud, but as Eze watched, her eyes deadly, they took their turns with my razor-sharp pendant.

  “I used to think that when we ruled, this court would be different,” Axia said. “But I don't think you'll ever willingly step down from the throne, Mother, and I don't think you'll ever change. I want to be part of the kind of court I would have led. I pledge myself to the seas, to Morgan, and to Bailey, who taught me that humanity is something worth having.”