Page 88 of The Threads Between

“I'm saying,” Beth replied, “that something exists at the foundation of reality. Something that was here before us and will remain after we're gone. Whether you call them the Fates or the Norns or any of the hundred other names humanity has given them across centuries, the shape beneath the names remains.”

“The Weave,” I said.

“Yes.” Beatrice's voice was quiet. Reverent. “The fabric beneath everything. The threads that hold existence together. We touch them. We work with them. But we did not create them.”

August shifted beside me. The bond hummed—his attention sharpening.

“Why women?” I asked. The question I had never found an answer to.

Beth considered this for a long moment.

“The three sisters,” she said, “were all women. Not because women are better or purer or more magical by nature. But because the work they did—spinning, measuring, cutting—resonates with something in how women exist in the world. We carry the potential for creation in our bodies. We understand cycles—beginnings and endings woven together. The magic recognizes that kinship.”

“It's not that men are lesser,” Beatrice added. “It's that the magic speaks a language women are born already knowing. Men can pass the gift through their bloodlines—fathers to daughters, grandfathers to granddaughters. The magic flows through them. It simply doesn't wake in them.”

She paused. “Until now.”

August's hand found mine. Held on.

“The three sisters,” I said slowly, thinking aloud. “The Spinner creates the thread. The Measurer determines its length and shape. The Cutter severs it when the time comes.”

“Yes.”

“Weavers are spinners. They create. They manipulate the threads, shape reality.”

“Yes.”

“And Void Callers—like me—we measure. We hold space. We restore what should be, reach into absence and bring back what belongs.”

Beth's eyes glinted in the firelight. “You understand quickly.”

“And Threadbreakers.” I looked at August. “They're the Cutters. The ones who sever what was bound. Who end what needs ending so something new can begin.”

He was very still beside me.

“But the Cutter was a woman too,” he said quietly. “All three sisters were.”

“Yes,” Beth agreed.

“Then why me?”

The question hung in the air. The fire crackled. Somewhere across the clearing, someone laughed softly.

“I don't know,” Beth said finally. “No one does. You are the first time the Cutter's power chose a man in all the centuries we have record of.”

“Perhaps the old rules are changing,” Beatrice offered. “Perhaps something is shifting in the Weave itself.”

“Or,” Beth said, her gaze steady on August, “perhaps you were simply needed. Perhaps the pattern required something it had never required before.”

“For what?”

Beth's expression softened. “That,” she said, “is what you get to decide.”

Silence settled over us. The good kind—not awkward, but full.

I thought about the bond humming between August and me. The Measurer and the Cutter. Restoration and ending. The ability to hold space and the ability to sever what should not remain.

Together, we were something that had never existed.