Free Fates by Lanie Bross Page A

The urge to run after the boy, Luc, made her muscles tense. She wanted to know he would be okay. She wanted to comfort him in some way.
    She had to take several deep breaths before she could relax. Her job was done. She was one step closer to going home, so why couldn’t she just be happy and celebrate?
    She took a long drink of the champagne as she made her way off the gangplank, enjoying the cool fizz of the liquid in her throat and the feel of the rough, still-warm planks underneath her feet. There were very few benefits to being exiled in Humana, but one of them was this: the vast collection of surfaces and sensations, the sting of new rain and the smooth bite of gravel. She remembered how the first time she’d ever had a drink of ice water it had brought a blinding pain to her head, directly behind her eyes—but it had made her laugh at the same time.
    She turned in the direction the boy had gone, telling herself that she was not looking for him—only heading down to the water, where she could sit in the sand and watch the stars.
    Lucas.
    A nice human name—comfortable and rough at the same time, like the old blanket she used in her rooms underneath the rotunda. For ten years she’d been dwelling in this world, executing fates as the Unseen Ones willed, but none of the humans had made her feel this way before. What was different this time?
    She had remembered the boy from the accident as soon as she’d seen him. Tasks rarely intertwined. At first, she thought surely something had gone wrong.
    But something had rooted her in place, made it difficult to leave his side. She discovered that he was … funny. Humor was another human invention she still barely understood, but the boy had made her laugh, as she had that day when the ice water first slid down her throat and she had a sudden image of stars exploding behind her eyes.
    She’d interacted with boys before over the course of her years in Humana. But it was work, duty, nothing more. Brief moments of contact: a push at the right moment, a whispered word, a communicated secret. And she had never actually spoken with a boy—not about anything important. Lucas had asked her about stars, almost as if he knew. …
    He was different—he looked at her differently, too, as if he could see something behind her eyes.
    When his arm almost brushed hers as he looked out onto the water, she had felt those electric sensations again, as she had at the scene of the accident when he had leaned in close to unbuckle her seat belt. In all her time in Humana, no one had affected her like that. What were the chances that she would see him twice in the span of two days?
    The Unseen Ones guided everything in the universe. There was no chance. There was no coincidence, either.
    Corinthe’s hand still tingled from where she had touched him, not an unpleasant feeling at all. Luc had been funny and smart and nice to look at: His strong, lean body and handsome face. And that smile.
    She had wondered before—about the woman at the flower market who had fallen in love with an older man on a bicycle, or the small boy with freckles who Corinthe had helped reunite with his mother—but she had known, instinctively, that she must never give in to the instinct to know. Knowing was for the Unseen Ones.
    But Luc was different. She wanted to see him again. She had to. After she had checked to make sure he was okay, her success—her duty—would feel complete.
    That was her excuse for pulling the knife free from its sheath. As she made her way toward the beach, she used the sharp tip to prick her finger.
    Blood welled up from the small wound on her pointer finger. She squeezed until a single drop of blood fell into the glass half filled with champagne, then moved the glass in small circles until the liquid, now stained a faint pink, rolled around in the glass.
    The surface went from clear to reflective, like a tiny mirror. An image wavered