Page 56 of Drop Dead Gorgeous
“Not you.” The words leave me before I can temper them. “Not if I fight for it.”
Only then do I realize I am trembling.
“Stay awake. Don’t go back to sleep. I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.”
She runs her fingers through my hair as though I am the one who needs comforting.
“You’re a strange man, Grim.”
“I love you.”
The confession follows her touch as naturally as breathing.
Before she can answer, I step through the thinning place between worlds.
Home has no geometry. It is infinity rendered in black marble and impossible curves, streets that fold endlessly back upon themselves and corridors without beginning or end. The living imagine kingdoms of the dead filled with ghosts and shadows, but there are no crowds here, only presences: my sisters, others like me, and the endless machinery that keeps the universe turning.
At the center hangs the great web.
Every soul.
Every life.
Every ending.
I find the Fates where they have always been.
Clotho spins.
Lachesis measures.
Atropos waits with her shears resting lightly across her lap.
Thousands upon thousands of glowing threads shimmer around them, each one carrying the whole impossible weight of a single life.
Atropos does not look up.
“You’re early, Thanatos.”
“I’ve come to ask for a reprieve.”
Clotho laughs, a dry, splintering sound.
“For yourself? We are immortal.”
“For someone in my care.”
The chamber stills.
Even the threads seem to hesitate.
Atropos finally raises her eyes.
“The rules do not permit bargaining.”
“Nor petitions,” Clotho adds, winding a strand of impossible gold around her fingers. “You collect. You ferry. Never once have you asked for mercy.”
I flatten my palms against the obsidian table.
