Strange Fates (Nyx Fortuna) Read Online Free PDF Page B

predecessors’ temples.
    Morta was the one who really had it in for me. She probably sharpened those scissors of hers, just waiting for the day she finally found the silver thread my mother had stolen and hidden. The silver thread that Morta was supposed to have cut when I was a baby, but my mother stole it and hid it away. The three witches had been looking for it, and me, ever since.
    Morta cut my mother’s thread when I was twenty, which was also the year I’d stopped physically aging. I didn’t know why. I just knew I was stuck unable to die, probably forever. Or at least until I found my thread.
    Shakespeare had been alive when my mother was born. In fact, he knew my aunts, which explained a lot about Macbeth .
    I didn’t want to think about that right now. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found my thread, but I didn’t want them to make that decision for me. I’d never feel safe, not with those three hags at my back at every turn.
    My mother lost her job the day I was born. Her family, my three aunts, took one look at me and the evidence of my gender and promptly fired her. In the history of our family, there had never been a male born to one of the Sisters of Fate. Until me.
    My hands clenched, but I managed to remain calm. “Deliver the message and get out of my sight.”
    I realized that Gaston had been speaking for quite some time. I’d missed part of it, but it seemed to be running along the lines of how much he’d relish the day my time was up.
    “So you don’t have anything new to say?” I interrupted him.
    He stared at me, nonplussed. “Did you not listen to anything I have said?”
    “Not really,” I replied.
    “Morta wants your head on a platter,” he summarized.
    I shrugged. “She’s wanted that since the day I was born.”
    “This is different,” he said. “I think this time she means it.”
    “I’m alone,” I said bitterly. “She murdered the only person I’ve ever loved. There’s nothing left.”
    He just chuckled. “Poor dumb son of Fortuna. Didn’t you know? Your mother’s little stunt won’t save you for much longer.”
    “What are you talking about?” I asked. Mom never told me who my father was, so the only family I had in the world wanted me dead. “It’s not like my mom had the chance to give me all the deets on the crazy relatives,” I continued. “Since they killed her.”
    They couldn’t kill me, but they could make my life pretty miserable. My aunts’ job, as far as I could tell, was to play one giant game of Red Light, Green Light with the world. Morta’s job, which entailed lots of slicing and dicing with those enormous golden shears of hers, was to give someone a permanent red light. She wasn’t Death exactly, but those scissors of hers gave Death the signal where and when to show up. Morta would snip a thread and Death would mosey on down to collect the soul.
    Gaston grinned evilly. “There are ways to make an immortal less, well, immortal. Very unpleasant ways. Make it easy on yourself and give me the thread.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. My disbelief had made him laugh harder. “For the millionth time. I. Don’t. Have. It.”
    He’d left me bloody and beaten, but alive. The worst part was that I could tell he really enjoyed his work. Half of the scars on my body were courtesy of Gaston, my aunts’ Tracker.
    Why had he let me go? Experience told me that it was only because my aunts had something worse planned for me.
    I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky next time. I needed to face my aunts. I’d been on the run for two hundred years. I was tired of running.
    I came back to the present and realized I’d gripped the chocolate bar so tightly, it had snapped in half.
    I was in Minneapolis, my aunts’ territory. The Fates could live anywhere. Why had they chosen Minnesota?
    It was time to fight. But although I knew I’d be fighting a war I’d be sure to lose, I needed to arm myself for battle. Gaston had said it