Free Bailey Morgan [2] Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Page B

earlier ponderings about the role I played in connecting the worlds.
    “… our fathers brought forth on this continent …”
    Sigh. I was hopeless—either my subconscious didn't want me probing the issue of connectivity, or it had the attention span of a kindergartener.
    “You are very young.” Valgius's voice was deep and held just enough of a hint of disapproval that I wondered if either of them could see past my shields to my wandering thoughts. The first time I'd come to this place, I'd been an
open book, but over months—now years—my power had grown, and they'd become less and less able to use theirs on me.
    “I'll be eighteen in a couple of months,” I said. With a little huff that made me sound closer to the mental age of my subconscious, I finally opened my eyes, which I'd resisted doing in an attempt to stay snuggled down on the Seal for as long as possible, safe and sound and waiting for mortal souls to flood my body with knowledge, power, and the desire to weave.
    “Eighteen.” Adea's voice held a great deal of amusement. “Sometimes I forget you live in their years, Bailey.” She paused, and I could sense her debating whether or not to say more. “You might not always.”
    “Then whose years would I live in?”
    Adea and Val remained suspiciously quiet. Like I wasn't hesitant enough about this Reckoning thing already.
    “Come,” Val said finally.
    I looked around me at the Nexus, the place that Zo and I had agreed was “pretty.” I was clearly outdoors, but the space gave the impression of being enclosed. The grass underneath my feet was lush and just barely damp, always touched by a morning dew no matter what time I came here. “Where are we going?” I asked.
    I couldn't begin to imagine what the Otherworld would be like, any more than I could describe the Nexus when I wasn't there. At that second, the Nexus seemed so simple and clear in my mind: the Seal, the grass, the morning sun, and flowers, lots of them, so large and
colorful that they seemed to belong more to prehistoric Earth than the world where I spent my days.
    Maybe that was what Adea meant about time passing differently here. Sidhe lived so long that most humans considered them immortal, and their world, just offset from the mortal plane, hadn't aged the way ours had.
    Neither of my companions answered my question about where we were headed. They took it as rhetorical, since I vaguely knew the answer before I'd asked the question. Instead, Adea issued an order, her tone light, but impossible to disobey.
    “Take our hands.” Her voice sounded the way that honey looked dripping off a spoon: light and golden, thick and flowing.
    Knowing I didn't have a choice, I lifted my hands and slowly took one of theirs in each of mine.
    Birth. Life. Death.
    Our hands warmed until they were so hot that I expected my fingers to melt. It hurt, but not as much as it should have, and in a strange way, the pain felt good. Right. Familiar.
    Birth. Life. Death.
    We were three, and as we stood there, memories washed over me. Memories that weren't mine, but weren't theirs either. Memories of what it meant to be born, to live, and to die. Memories of the Earth itself, memories of this place. Memories of the Seal, forged by human and Sidhe.
    And something older than all of that. Older than the Nexus. Older than Adea and Valgius and the blood in my veins.
    “Do you feel them?” Adea asked me. “Do you feel their call?”
    Each night I came here and, as I wove, became one with the mortal realm. This time, the connection stretched out in a different direction, and their voices—unspoken, but somehow musical—echoed in my mind.
    Sidhe. Sidhe. Sidhe.
    In that moment, we stopped being the three Fates. We stopped being Birth and Life and Death, and our connection to the world I lived in faded away, drowned out by something bigger, something that came from so far inside of me that I was half-afraid that it would turn me inside out trying to reach the