It wasn’t a portal, but it was another way I’d never traveled before. I felt Malphas close by, but he wasn’t in reach to stab as I watched moments of time flash before my eyes. In all my years, I’d never seen the passing and changing of time in such a way. It was scary to see time literally fly right past me.
“It takes years to be able to control time without having to use external magic. I’ve gotten good about going to the past. Seeing the future is harder, and I’ve only been able to do that a few short times. Rest assured that I’m not as delusional as you think. I know you’re going to turn down my offer, which is why I haven’t told you how we could actually be together.
“I know you’ve lived most of your life adored by every male who walked into it. It’s impossible for men not to be drawn in by you. You officially only cropped up on my radar after I found out about the prophecy that brought us together. For some reason it was a well-guarded secret from me, but it shouldn’t have been.
“When I found out you were meant to kill me, I set out to get to you first. I’ve since found out more information about the prophecy that intertwines our lives and it’s not information that settles well with me, nor will it you. I don’t know if it will really change things for you, but it has for me. I feel gypped out of the life I should’ve had.”
He’d lost me from the moment he’d opened his mouth. The more he spoke, the more confused I got. I was fairly certain I didn’t want to know what he meant. I’d probably thought that about everything thing that had come from his lips.
Before I could open my mouth, the timeline before my eyes stopped moving and Malphas picked out a particular point in time. With how fast the scenes had been going, I hadn’t been able to see what any of them looked like. I’d tried to make sense of them, but all I got were fragments of images that may have been of my life. For some reason I didn’t think they were.
“We’ve both lived for so long that it would take centuries to wade through just a second of every important scene. We’ve spoken briefly about Eva and I know she’s one of the Fates who are protecting your children from me. As I told you before, I’m not the threat though, watch this.”
I didn’t have a lot of options. The living room we’d been standing in was gone and it seemed like we were in a void like Eva often hid out in. I wondered how one found a void to call their own. I had a feeling I’d need one at some point. If nothing else, I hoped I could send people there when they needed a timeout.
Speaking of Eva, I saw her appear in the scene we were watching. She didn’t look any different, other than she wasn’t wearing a lick of clothing. I covered my eyes before I could see more than I already had. If he wanted to show me what a lunatic she was, there were plenty of scenes that illustrated that when she was fully dressed.
“I’ve seen you both running around naked before, so you really shouldn’t act like this is something surprising, or unseen. If you really have turned that modest, I suppose you will be fine just listening in, but I’d like you to watch their faces and tell me what you see. You’ve spent more in person time with her, so I consider you an expert on the subject.”
I didn’t owe Malphas a single thing, so if he was determined to make me watch something he thought was important, he could deal with me not actually watching it.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” I heard Eva’s annoying voice say, not even that had changed over the years.
“Obviously, but since it has, we need to decide what to do. We need to keep them away from each other,” another female voice said. It sounded vaguely familiar, probably because it wasn’t too different from Eva’s.
“But that will be difficult with what she’s meant for. How in the world does something like this happen? We’re so careful about giving out destinies and somehow we managed to end up with one person having two people connected to her in a way that shouldn’t happen.” It was Eva speaking again, and she was irate about whatever mix-up she was talking about.
I was tempted to move my hand away from my face to get a look at the person she was having a conversation with, but a third female voice joined in, sounding just a little deeper than the other two. I had a good feeling I knew who the other two women were, and I didn’t remember ever seeing them all three together. That fact almost caused me to part my fingers.
“It would be easy to just kill him. Well, at least easier now that he’s a baby and hasn’t had a chance to really develop into a phoenix. I’m sure we could still find a way if we let him grow up, but why take the chance that they’d find each other? If that were to happen, we couldn’t kill him.”
“Of course your first idea is to make his life short, Lachesis. The two of you love to measure out time and determine how and when to cut the threads of life. I propose we give him a chance, but we’ll have to alter him in some way to make it so they don’t meet. We already know that she’s bound for greatness. We just have to change things so he doesn’t make his way into that picture.”
I couldn’t help parting my fingers to look at the scene at that point. Eva and her sisters stood in a circle talking about some poor guy’s fate. It was one of the main reasons I hated the Fates, and god-like people in general. They thought it was okay to control other people’s lives, and in reality they should’ve been more concerned about their own.
“What exactly are you suggesting?” the sister I knew to be Atropos asked.
Eva rubbed her hand on her chin as she pondered the question. “For one, we need to alter him so he isn’t a phoenix, or at least in a way that he won’t ever realize he is. While we’re at that, we need to do some memory erasing on his parents. I’m sure other phoenixes felt him come into the world, but I don’t think he’s been introduced to anyone else.”
“And then what? Throw him out to the wolves? Even we can’t remove all his powers and it’s going to become apparent quickly that he isn’t human if we leave him with one of them,” Lachesis said.
“Very true. I say we leave him with Hades. I’m sure he can find someone to look after him, and then we don’t have to worry about her meeting him. She’s not going die, so we should be good. I can’t think of a single reason why she’d ever visit the underworld.” Eva had something all planned out and it sounded horrible.
“But what if he comes to this plane? The humans are still pretty early in their development and eventually he may wish to experience life away from the banished. They could still be drawn together.”
Lachesis at least wasn’t willing to follow Eva blindly. I liked her a little more than I had in the past because of it. It wasn’t like we were best buds or anything to begin with, or worst enemies, but I liked that she challenged her sister.
“When the time is right, we’ll make up a prophecy that forces them to face off. It will be just what we need to make her realize her destiny. By that point, I’m sure we’ll be able to arm her with something to kill him.”
Eva was practically giddy that everything was falling into place. I understood exactly what she was saying, but my brain pleaded with her to be wrong.
“It seems a little extreme, but we have to clean up the mess. She can’t have both of them in her life. They would all kill each other because of the connection that’s already been in place for years,” Atropos said.
Lachesis appeared to be a little hesitant to agree, but after a few moments of silence she nodded her head. “Other than killing him right now, there isn’t another way to keep them apart. I’m not sure that removing the part of him that’s a phoenix, if that was possible, would keep the connection dimmed and she has to take her place as the leader.”
“Great,” Eva said as she rubbed her hands together. “Let’s go grab Malphas and get things settled. Eventually I’ll make contact with her and make sure she’s guided in the right direction, but I think I’ll wait awhile. Neither side is ready to come together, and there are so many of the special ones not yet in existence. We have to wait until just the right time in history. I have a feeling we have many years of waiting ahead
of us.”
Malphas stopped the scene, a move I was thankful for. I didn’t want to know what they did to him. Like they’d implied, I didn’t even know it was possible to make a phoenix not a phoenix.
“I didn’t find this until I started scanning through my past after we met. I don’t believe I was ever supposed to find it, but they already had me there with them, so it’s actually one of my memories. I don’t think they realized my powers had started while I was in the womb. I would’ve been a strong phoenix if they would’ve just left me alone.”
Malphas sounded mournful for the life he believed he lost. For all I knew everything he’d shown me was a lie and he was doing his best to be a good actor. Knowing Eva as little as I did, it sounded like something she would’ve done, though.
“Why should I believe what you just showed me actually happened? Not only could the whole thing have been made up, but I’ve been around Eva enough to know that there are other planes and that could’ve been something from one of them.”
“That may be true, but I did grow up in the underworld with Sisyphus looking after me. The gods allowed him to quit messing around with that boulder of his so he could make sure I was fed and taken care of. He found out about the power I had and taught me to use it to make people my slaves. Power in the underworld is important, and what I have flowing through my veins was enough to make me a force to be reckon with.”
“You’re joking.” He had to be joking. I could see how being raised in the underworld would mess up your mind, but there was no way what he said was true.
“Why do you think everyone calls me and my followers demons? I swear everything I’ve shown you and said was true. We were born connected and that connection apparently threatened what you were to become, so I was dealt with.”
I didn’t understand how that was possible. It made absolutely no sense. Phoenixes only had one person they were tied to, and I liked to believe the Fates didn’t have anything to do with that. They hadn’t even been around when Nate and I originally connected.
“I understand this isn’t the best time to be giving you this information, but I thought you should know before we meet today on the battlefield. I know you still need to fulfill your destiny, and to do that I need to die. I want you to know there are no hard feelings there, but I will make every attempt to take you with me. Nate has had you long enough.
“We’ll build our own life together where I grew up. That’s at least what I’m hoping for. I’ve seen things that may give me a different hope for my future, but I think eventually we’ll find a way to have the life we were denied.”
Nothing seemed to change the fact that he was delusional. I had to take the news that the prophecy was fake in stride, because even if it was, the Fates believed I had some kind of destiny to fulfill, and I doubted that was to die with Malphas.
“We’ll see how that turns out, but I’m pretty sure the second I see you anywhere near one of my friends on the battlefield, I won’t hesitate killing you.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really want to kill you or your people, but I can understand why none of the Fates are standing by your side for this one. I would do anything to end their lives.”
I’d threatened to kill Eva many times, so I couldn’t fault him for feeling that way. I didn’t know what to feel about anything. What I did know is that I’d seen him kill my brother in a vision and he knew about said vision. I didn’t hear him saying he wouldn’t kill Rick, it was just that he didn’t want to.
I wasn’t sure what else needed to be said between us. I had a feeling he’d shown me everything he wanted to.
“I can’t make any promises about what will happen in the heat of the battle. If you can get your friend Eva on the phone, you could probably talk her into making things work out however you wanted them to. You have to know that she’s the one running the show, whether she’s there during the action or not.”
“Personally I think the fighting they’ve set up is kind of silly. Neither of our sides are taking any damage, even though I remember people getting hurt from the things I’ve seen.”
“I find they let you see only what they want you to. I’m going to send you back to your troops. It will be a little while before I get everything together and meet you. I hope you take that time to think things over and make the choice that works best for you.”
There wasn’t a reason for me to respond, because I had no idea what to think about what had been revealed. It was a good thing one of the weird vortexes opened up and sent me on my way. I didn’t expect Eva had counted on Malphas reaching out to me and revealing the truth as he knew it, so things were bound to get interesting, especially if she showed her face.
CHAPTER 21
Plans worth breaking