Before the Fall by Sable Grace Page B

Goddess of the Hunt would have to wait. Kyana wanted answers before she went anywhere. “I’ll only need a minute.”
    Clotho adjusted her long golden braid over her shoulder and fixed Kyana with a cold stare. Vamps were still considered outsiders, even those who’d proven their allegiance over and over as Kyana had. She prided herself on her ability to stare others down, to intimidate them with the quickest of glances, but Clotho’s penetrating blue eyes forced Kyana to avert her gaze.
    â€œSpeak quickly, Kyana,” Clotho said. “It takes us far longer to tend our souls these days.”
    â€œI would think your tending wouldn’t be so tiresome, given the lack of human life Above. So many are dead.”
    Tears welled in the Fate’s eyes. “We don’t need a Vampyre to remind us of our failures. We are faced with them every day.”
    At least she hadn’t called Kyana Dark Breed.
    Uncomfortable with the tears, Kyana blurted out, “I found Jordan Faye.”
    â€œWe know.” Atropos, the eldest of the three sisters and by far the most menacing, tossed something green into the cauldron and gave it a quick stir.
    For a blessed moment, that taunting, mysterious scent vanished and all Kyana could smell were the rotting waters of the River Styx.
    â€œOf course you do.” If Jordan had died, Atropos would have known before anyone else. She was, after all, in charge of death, and guided those newly deceased to the river where they’d await their eternal fate.
    â€œI want to know about the mark on her breast. Is she what I think she is?”
    Scowling, Atropos raised a black brow. “You demand answers from us ?”
    â€œNot demanding. Asking.” Kyana softened her tone. “Is she one of you?”
    The sisters looked to one another. The middle sister, Lachesis, began weeping again. Atropos and Clotho wrapped their arms around the beautiful redhead in quiet comfort. Again, the scent rose from the cauldron and twisted Kyana’s belly. What the hell was it?
    â€œYou think we enjoy knowing we are to be replaced?” Atropos hissed. “That we are to hand over the duties we’ve been charged with for ten thousand years?”
    The very walls shook with their combined anger. Kyana held her ground and remained silent. No one wanted to be replaced, but the Fates couldn’t deny that their time had come. For more than two centuries now, Oracles had been professing that the power of the gods would soon wane. Since then, the Fates had been marking Chosen, making certain strong bodies were born on Earth, capable of absorbing the enormous powers of the gods when the time came to transfer them into newer souls.
    That demons and other Dark Breeds now walked the earth was proof that the power of the Fates and the gods no longer held the strength it once had. Their era of reigning was over, and hope rested on the shoulders of their replacements.
    Time stood still as the Sisters whispered comforts to each other. Kyana strained to hear the hushed conversation but her head was full of the powerful scent, the unknown ache, the wanting. The heat of the beacon seared her thigh, pulling her mind back from the hypnotic effects of the cauldron’s aroma. Artemis’s impatience over Kyana not arriving at the god’s temple Below was burning a hole in her leather.
    â€œAre answers the only thing you came for, Kyana?”
    She flinched. Her skin itched. She needed to get out of here. Needed to clear her head. “Yes. No. I want to protect her if my suspicions are right.”
    The Fates studied her, then one another, as though sharing a conversation she could not hear.
    Lachesis, the weaver of destiny and the keeper of truths, dried her eyes with a lock of her fiery hair and addressed her sisters. “She is honest. Though I suspect her offer is not completely unselfish, she means no harm.”
    To Kyana, she said, “You are correct. Jordan