Page 87 of Unraveling Fate

She couldn’t imagine that life to be worth living.

“I don’t want to be rid of it.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” Vasilios sighed. Plastic bit into Cadenza’s wrists as he ziptied her hands together.

“If you refuse to give me the music, I will simply kill you. Eating your song will kill you too—I’m afraid I lied earlier about it helping us both. Although just killing you would be a shameful waste, since I can’t eat your song unless you give it to me freely, and it tastes so good. And that would also mean I couldn’t give it to Silence.” He waggled his head side to side like he was listing the pros and cons of a restaurant menu. “Either way, you will Spin no Thread for the Fates, so we still win.” He aimed the gun at her forehead. “And either way, you’ll be dead.”

Twenty-One

Reyna jumped, shifting to her owl form mid-leap, and dove at Vasilios’s face. Her talons connected and ripped flesh. He stumbled sideways, mouth open in a silent shriek, and the pistol clattered to the ground. Her feathers shimmered as she switched back to human form in time to slam a kick into Vasilios’s stomach that flung him against the wall. The plaster cracked behind his head.

She paused, caught between awe at her own strength and disgust at the feeling of Vasilios’s skin tearing under her talons. She shook her fingers like she’d touched something slimy.

Vasilios recovered quickly and sank into a crouch, lips curled back. Reyna’s pulse spiked. She’d never been in a real fight before—eighth grade shop class didn’t count. This was life and death. What was she supposed to do?

Weight pulled on the pocket of her dress. The tuning fork.

Vasilios leapt. She whipped the fork out and smashed it against the crazed man’s forehead.

“Stop!” she commanded. Heat flared along her skin. Vasilios froze, still snarling at her.

Reyna glared at him, flooding the fork with her will to keep him still.

He shook, fighting her command. The shaking grew to tremors—rocking though his body, spreading into the tuning fork, and reverberating up through Reyna’s arm, as she fought to hold him motionless. A thought came, clear and calm.

Kill him. Will him to death, to stop forever.

She recoiled.No!

She had only ever created with her heat, never destroyed. She made things, she didn’tunmakethem. But she couldn’t let Vasilios hurt them either.

“Sleep.” She stretched the word out, covering his resistance with her command. The fire of her will roared until she thought her skin would blister. Heat waves flickered in the air. Vasilios resisted three seconds more, then collapsed to the floor.

Gasping, Reyna shoved the tuning fork back in her pocket and dabbed water from the vial around her neck on her pulse points. She looked at her arms expecting that this time surely there would be smoke, but they looked clear. Cadenza slipped off her chair, gaping at her.

“Come on.” Reyna grabbed Cadenza’s hands and broke the zip ties. “We gotta go.”

“That was amazing!” Cadenza slowed in the hallway, pointing back to the room Reyna had just pulled her out of. “You were amazing! I can’t believe?—”

Reyna turned back to pull Cadenza into a run. “Won’t be so amazing if he wakes up and we’re still dawdling in the hall. We can sneak out the side entrance and get to the car.”

Cadenza shook her head. “No, I think they’ve got Ruairi and Cyrus somewhere, we need to find them.”

Voices shouted behind them.

“Sounds like he didn’t stay out for long,” Reyna said.

A muffled shot sounded, and plaster burst off the wall. Cadenza yelped, and they skidded around a corner.

Reyna clutched at the wall for balance. “Stupid heels.” She ripped them off her feet and chucked them one at a time around the corner. Someone grunted.

“Ha!” She laughed in triumph and ducked back around the edge of the wall.

“Where’s Canon?” Cadenza asked.

Reyna ground her teeth. Canon had blown his second chance, the thread had snapped, and right now she didn’t want to think about how much that hurt. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“What?”