Page 152 of A Fate So Cold

an ancient battle shall be waged anew

and from the ruins only one endure

or see the land destroyed forevermore

She’d fulfilled it to the letter. She’d nearly followed it to the grave.

Ellery stared at the wand in her hand. She wielded the ancient, primordial magic of an entire season. Yet even she was not as powerful as the force that truly controlled this land: destiny.

But destiny could be tampered with. And for all superstition claimed that destiny knew the future, its words came piece by piece. It was responsive. Reactive.

Maybe it wasn’t all-powerful.

Maybe it could be changed.

Maybe it could even be thwarted.

EPILOGUE

Amidst the peace of Winter’s reign, one alban tree had failed to flourish. Its branches were bare. Its trunk had shriveled into a husk, the gray roots splayed around it as brittle as straw. It was a grave wherever they touched.

It had once been a meadow.

For several months, the land where the tree stood remained undisturbed, regarded as a haunted place, a lifeless place.

Until the first day of Summer came.

As sunrise blazed molten across the horizon, a scorching wind tore from the east, tinged with smoke and warning of storm.

The barren alban rustled with it. And though no leaves sprouted, no flowers bloomed, a magic kindled within the roots. The arid earth shifted. The dead grass whipped flat, revealing a shape that hadn’t been there before—the corpse of a boy.

His eyes were closed. His face was long and pale, dusted with freckles like specks of ash. A silver scar rippled across his chest in a jagged crater.

As a ray of sunlight seared against him, his lashes twitched.

His fingers curled in the dirt, as if reaching for something he no longer held.

Then his last breath burst back into his lungs with a gasp, and, alive and fearful and shivering, Domenic Barrow realized that destiny dared have more to ask of him.