Free Fates by Lanie Bross

shoulder and laughed. “Looks like you need to take it easy on the brews, man.”
    Luc yanked away from Tyler’s touch and pushed his way through the people still laughing and partying on the deck. They’d know soon enough that the golden couple had broken up. News like that spread faster than a California wildfire.
    As soon as he landed on the boardwalk, he started to run. Luc had no idea where he was going; he just needed to get as far away from everyone as possible.
    There was little traffic on Marina Boulevard, and after a few minutes, he slowed to a walk. His lungs hurt, as if someone were squeezing them. The image of Karen and Mike swirled around in his head. Weirdly, he didn’t feel mad anymore. He felt strangely detached, as if he were watching a movie from someone else’s life. Already he regretted swinging at Mike.
    Luc jammed his hands into his pockets and hurried across the street, cutting down Baker. Ahead, the lights from the Palace of Fine Arts reflected across the lagoon.
    The place always felt peaceful to him. He and Jas used to go there a lot when they were younger. With Mom. Luc hadn’t been back since she left. His mother had loved the rotunda. She said it was a magical place. Jasmine would sit curled up in her lap, wide-eyed and silent, as she told stories about fairies and knights and beautiful princesses rescued in the nick of time.
    After their mother left, Luc had stopped believing.
    There was no such thing as happily ever after.

5
    T he Messenger was nestled in the palm of Corinthe’s hand. Once outside, on the safety of the deck, she released it. It flew up and hummed past her, its flickering glow fading into darkness. It would make its way back to the lagoon to deliver the message: another destiny fulfilled. Corinthe leaned over the polished wooden railing of the lower deck and watched Luc until he disappeared into the darkness. She felt … troubled. Was that the word? Was that the feeling ?
    Humans, she thought, didn’t understand that they were simply parts of a much vaster plan. Karen was fated to fall in love with someone else; Corinthe wished she could have explained it to the boy, Luc, so he would understand.
    This had been an easy task—so easy, in fact, Corinthe wondered why this particular fate had required the aid of an Executor. Corinthe had sought out Mike at the party and encouraged him to act on his feelings toward Karen. He had hesitated, sure that Karen already had a boyfriend. It took a persuasive conversation and one small lie to convince him otherwise.
    Karen had been easier to sway. Her doubts had obviously been there even before Corinthe intervened.
    â€œWhere is he now?” Corinthe had asked, widening her eyes, imitating a look of surprise and concern (Was it concern? Or was it caring?) when Karen mentioned her boyfriend.
    Mike and Karen had done the rest.
    She grabbed a crystal flute of champagne and quickly shouldered her way out of the crowd. People were whispering and giggling, and several times she heard his—Luc’s—name. It made her unaccountably angry —that was a word, and a feeling, she knew.
    Humans concerned themselves with so much that didn’t matter, with so much they had no stake in. Why?
    As a Fate, she and her sister Fates had lived in perfect harmony. Each had a task and a role. They were like threads in a large tapestry. Each individual strand was insignificant, but together they made something whole and beautiful. That was the essence of Pyralis: balance, equilibrium. As an Executor, her job was equally clear: do as the Messengers instructed.
    That was the beautiful thing about the universe…it was a vast mechanism, full of a billion tiny spinning parts, all of them moving in tandem, like one enormous clock with a vast pendulum that ticked back and forth between night and day, death and life.
    And yet, the strange sensation crept through her even as she struggled to put a name to it.