Wings and Shadowthief by May Sage
The Eternal Song
Jack wasn't a stranger to portals, and he hated them with a passion, though they could be hella convenient sometimes. Still, he expected the usual unpleasantness.
What he didn't expect was to feel like he'd been hit by a truck, eaten by a moose, spit back out and trampled, for good measure.
Everything fucking hurt. He tried to sit up with a grunt, and failed.
When he came to, Jack was lying on a hard surface. He couldn't see properly at first, his vision blurry.
Three women stood over him, shrouded in white veils that covered them from head to toe.
"Shit."
He tried to get up, but was immediately assaulted by a wave of nausea.
"It'll pass," one of the creatures said, her voice a joyous bell, like that of a happy child. "You were pulled out of a faster-than-light transport. You'll be fine in a moment."
Would he?
Jack forced himself to a crouch, first, then to his feet. He hadn't felt half as wobbly after getting drunk on his twenty-first birthday.
"Let me guess. You're the Fates."
He stared in their direction, and if he couldn't see them well, he didn't let it show.
His surroundings were just as murky as his detainers, though he got the sense of being in a vast hall—not quite outside, with the warmth of a hearth, but also a cold breeze and the smell of woods.
"A clever boy, aren't you, Jack?" This voice was low and seductive, a clear contrast to the innocence of the first.
"Clever he may yet be," another woman croaked, in the broken tone of an old crone.
Jack had a hard time deciding which one he trusted less. "You took great pains to bring me here. I assume killing me would have been easier. What do you want?"
Since Hunter had told Tris the Fates were after him, he'd considered several conjectures in his mind, and come up empty. He had zero clue what three of the most powerful entities in the universe could want from him, a half-Enlightened, all-around disaster who had no weight in the grand scheme of things.
Right now, he didn't care. He needed to be right back where they pulled him from, with Tris, Gwen, and the rest of their friends. They needed him. He had no time for godly bullshit.
“Straight to the point.” The crone laughed. “I like him.”
To his credit, he didn’t mention how little he cared about any of them liking him.
His senses were slowly getting better. The three women in front of him were of the same titanic height—two heads taller than his six foot three—though one seemed thin as a rail under the veil, the other voluptuous, and the one in the middle, fat.
“What we want,” said the child, the larger one of the three, “is to give you what you deserve.”
She took one step closer to him, and Jack forced himself to remain where he stood. It was never wise to show fear to a predator.
The Fate lifted a hand to his forehead, pressing one cold finger against it.
He saw himself, though not the version he knew. A man slightly older, with some gray in his blond hair. He smiled down a little boy with his eyes, locking hands with a woman who looked so beautiful, so perfect he could have commissioned a picture.
She had dark hair and alabaster skin, with brown eyes and a mole close to her nose. He knew he teased her about the mole often. Her name was—
“Your mate awaits you. In a few short years, barely a hundred, you’ll meet her and know true happiness.”
Yeah, right. The Fates wanted to play matchmakers for him.
They were pointing out one thing he never let himself think about for long, however.
A hundred years? If he looked like that then, it meant that he was a true immortal. Demigods weren’t always. He’d never paused to think of it—think of seeing his mortal friends and family age and die one after the other.
His mother. Gwen. The huntsmen.
At least, he’d have Tris and the rest of the Drakes.
And apparently, a son. A wife.
“What’s the catch?”
There was always a catch.
“You’re diverging from your destiny,” said the child.
“You’ve been tricked.” The seductive, thin Fate closed in.
“Captured.” The crone shook her imperious head. "An abomination claims you, and steals your future."
"Kill it."
"Kill it.
"Kill her."
The voices of the three Fates melded into one heady chant, a spell turning around his mind, encircling it.
Kill it. Kill it. Kill the monster. Kill the abomination. Kill the thief.
Jack could feel the weight of their magic closing in on him. They spoke of his future, but in the same breath they were trying to dictate it.
Aware as he was of their utter bullshit, Jack couldn't do a thing against the magic of the three primordial gods, whirling around him like beautiful dancers with the sharp teeth of feral wolves.
He couldn't resist. He had no control, no agency, no power.
Because Jack was inherently weak, cut off from the magic at his core.
Jack was the victim, the prey. The true shadowthief of Hunter's body and soul.
He did the one thing he could think of to retain his freedom.
He let go.