Destined (3 page)

“Really?” Ava said. As Corinthe walked away, she saw Ava reach into Nate’s jacket pocket at last and pull out the ring and the photo strip. She smiled at the emerald ring, but her expression turned angry when she saw the pictures.

Corinthe walked up the three patio steps and stood in the same spot she had earlier in the night—right by the railing next to the bar. She paused for a few moments to watch as Ava’s eyes widened and her bottom lip trembled. Regret tightened in Corinthe’s chest, foreign and frightening. Ava’s hand shook as she held the ring.

Ava looked around, her eyes wet. She got up and let Nate’s jacket fall to the ground, one sleeve sinking into the pool. She didn’t bother to pick it up as she grabbed her sandals and started toward the keg, where Nate was still standing. Her feet left wet prints on the concrete.

Corinthe’s pulse thumped in her veins. This was it, the moment when everything started to come together. She should be thrilled—but instead she was stuck wondering why Ava cared enough to cry. Did she love Nate? Love was the human emotion Corinthe found more perplexing than all the rest. It made people act crazy, causing immense joy but also horrendous pain—and yet they sought it out over and over again. Corinthe was lucky to remain free from the confusion of love. To her, love seemed impossibly chaotic. There was no
control, no balance.

But she couldn’t stop herself from wondering:
What does it feel like to love?

Corinthe shook the thought from her head. She was there not to understand but to fulfill a task.

She looked away and locked eyes with a boy in a Giants cap. He was coming toward her, and in that sliver of a moment she couldn’t help noticing his full lips and angular chin. Corinthe had seen many cute boys in her time, but few had had the power to distract her from her goals. This one was different. When she saw his face, something clicked in her gut, like an engine sputtering to life inside her. It was almost as though she knew him. She’d never had this feeling before.

The boy in the cap said nothing as he passed, but he left a faint smell of cloves in his wake. Corinthe made herself look away. Her heart had picked up speed, like she had just run the length of the city.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know whose that is.” Nate’s voice cut into Corinthe’s thoughts and she turned just in time to see Ava throwing the emerald ring at him—the one she’d found in his coat pocket, where Corinthe had carefully placed it—and holding the pictures up under his nose.

“And these?” she cried.

“I’ve never seen that before.” Nate glanced at the crowd gathering around them on the patio. Corinthe watched from her spot near the bar.

“Are you kidding me? That’s not
you
and
Kaitlin
making out in a photo booth?”

“I can explain,” Nate said.

“Really?” Ava asked, her voice rising. “Then explain. Explain why there are pictures of you kissing Kaitlin, and why the date on the back says last week. Explain it to me, Nate, because I must be understanding it all wrong.” She wiped away her tears, smearing mascara across her olive skin. People around them began whispering, stealing glances at the fighting
couple and at Kaitlin, who stood frozen at the edge of the crowd.

Nate’s mouth opened and closed, and Corinthe recognized the look of panic that morphed quickly to defeat. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Ava said, so quietly that Corinthe strained to hear her. The strip of pictures fell from her fingers, and a small sob escaped her lips. Nate grabbed her arm as she turned to leave.

“Babe, please. Can’t we talk about this?”

Ava turned back toward Nate and looked like she might say something—but in one swift movement she grabbed the drink out of his hand and threw it in his face. “Leave me alone, Nate.”

He let go of her to wipe the beer from his eyes. Several chuckles erupted from the crowd, and a female voice shouted, “You tell him!”

But Ava was already running down the path to the beach, the bottom of her dress gathered in her hands. Nate didn’t follow her.

Corinthe slipped through the gawking crowd. She followed Ava, warming up her hands, stretching them wide and balling them back up again. Gravel crunched below her flats as she made her way down the path to the rocky beach. The rocks were the size of fists, smooth and slippery. Corinthe heard the girl’s soft crying, even over the surf pounding the shore. Ava stood alone at the end of the old pier. The moon glistened off the rippling waves, sending the light dancing across the surface of the ocean. Corinthe wondered if Ava was thinking of her mother.

It was just like the image in the marble: Ava, backlit against the moon, her wavy hair caught by an odd gust of wind. She looked almost ethereal, like a goddess in the night, unaware that the life she knew was about to end.

There was no remorse in Corinthe’s heart, no hesitation in her movements.

This was her task.

This was her life.

Corinthe found her way to the small motorboat again. Waves pushed at its sides, rocking it left, then right. She undid the knot that tethered the boat to the shore. There was no time to undress. She quickly climbed in and turned the steering wheel to the left, wedging a piece of driftwood in it to secure it in place. She jumped back out and waded waist-deep into the water, the bottom of her silk romper becoming soaking wet. Corinthe looped Ava’s silver ribbon through the two circles in the metal. It slid in neatly, almost as though it was meant to connect the two sides of the motor. The final thread was in place at last. Fate had been spun.

She gave the ribbon a firm tug and the propeller sputtered to life. She jumped up and down and stifled a scream of sheer happiness. Relief coursed through her when she swung the motor down and heard it click into place. The propeller hit the water and cut through it quickly … but her feeling of joy was short-lived, because just then the front of the boat bucked up out of the water and shot toward Ava. Corinthe had always known the stakes; she should have been thrilled the plan had come together thus far. She swallowed the brief taste of regret.

With the waves crashing against the pier, Ava didn’t hear the boat coming until the last second. She spun around just as it slammed into the dock. Covering her head, she stumbled backward and slipped off the end of the pier. Her arms windmilled and she fell into the water with a startled cry.

The boat sputtered and stalled. Corinthe ran back down the pier, away from the accident and the girl who was struggling to keep her head above the surface. Ava thrashed in the water, just as she had in the images Corinthe had seen in her marble.

Corinthe leapt onto the rocks and headed toward a stand of bent eucalyptus trees. She crouched and hid behind them. She didn’t want to watch, but she had to. She had to be sure it all went down the way it was supposed to.

She glanced again toward the party, where the muffled noise of the crowd blended
with the crashing surf below her.

She couldn’t hear Ava now, only the waves crashing against each other. She imagined the details: Ava’s hair pooling around her face, legs and arms thrashing desperately, salt water filling her lungs and stomach.

Corinthe checked her phone for the time. It had been too long.

Something was wrong.

She couldn’t think clearly, and a heavy feeling formed in the pit of her stomach—as if she were being weighed down, turned into stone. Was this feeling … 
uncertainty
? Had she somehow misread the marble? She glanced furtively at the pathway, then back toward the ocean. She felt desperate and out of control, unsure whether she should intervene. Corinthe was an executor—she could only set things in motion and help fate along its path. She never knew the exact outcome of her tasks.

If this continued, she was certain the girl would die.

Corinthe hadn’t expected to feel this way. She closed her eyes, ignoring the frantic pounding in her heart. A twisted knot formed in her stomach and she realized how wrong, how
human
, this sensation of fear was. She thought of her guardian, who had assured her that all outcomes—all of life and death—were part of the larger fabric of fate.

Just then, a dark figure appeared on the pathway, carrying something metal that caught the moonlight. Owen and his telescope.

Finally.

Ava’s cry for help floated across the beach and relief swelled up inside Corinthe. Owen paused and then ran toward the shoreline, throwing the telescope to the ground and wading into the water. The cry for help came again, fainter this time, and Owen dove in.

She could just make him out, swimming strong and steady toward the form bobbing in the water and flailing against the dangerous waves. Corinthe stood and watched from the tree line, standing on her tiptoes. Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and every muscle in her
body tensed, until finally Owen reached Ava and wrapped an arm around her. Ava let out a breath.

Owen fought against the riptide as he swam back, slowly pulling Ava closer to shore. Corinthe was shocked at how strong he was. The power of his muscles, the power of fate, pulling both of them back to safety.

She couldn’t bring herself to leave until she knew how it ended. Corinthe paced back and forth, hidden by the shadows of the trees lining the beach. Her silk romper clung to her legs, cold and heavy.

Owen stumbled onshore, carrying Ava in his arms. He laid her down gently and wiped the sand from her face and hair. Corinthe crept closer from behind the trees and strained to hear.

“Ava!” Owen took her face in his hands. “Ava, look at me.”

“Owen?” she replied feebly.

He helped her to sit and cradled her body as she coughed up the water in her lungs.

“It’s okay,” he kept murmuring. “It’s okay.”

“You saved me,” she said, looking up at him. Her sweater was soaked and hung off her shoulders with the weight of the water. Her maxidress was tangled around her knees. Owen’s hair was darker now, slicked back with salt water, and Corinthe saw his angular face in the moonlight. He was just as handsome as ever, but he looked older. More mature. In the long silence that followed, Ava leaned into him, so close her lips were just inches away from his. Corinthe felt a tug at her heart as she watched them stare into each other’s eyes. Then it was as though something clicked inside Ava. Two pieces long separate suddenly fit together. Shocked by the realization, Ava widened her eyes briefly … then she kissed him. Slowly at first. Tentatively.

Owen kissed Ava back. His fingers moved up her cheeks and tangled themselves in her wet hair. Their kiss was slow and passionate, and finally Ava pulled away to look at him.

“I thought you hated me,” she said, shaking her head. Bits of sand were matted in her hair. “You never wanted to be around me anymore.”

“I
couldn’t
be around you. You were with Nate. I—”

“That’s over.” She buried her head in Owen’s chest and they sat quietly, their arms around each other.

Corinthe melted deeper into the shadows, a strange fluttering feeling in her stomach. Neither Owen nor Ava had noticed the tiny light flickering above their heads. It shimmered and darted this way and that, as if looking for something, then headed straight for Corinthe. She held out her hand. When the firefly landed in her palm, she closed her fingers around it carefully.

She could leave now; her task had been completed, and it was time to take the Messenger home. Ava and Owen had been brought together; they were now on the path toward their true destiny.

Not death.

Love.

Corinthe made her way up a narrow path to the road. She had a long walk back to the city, back to the Palace of Fine Arts, where she would set the firefly free, but she didn’t mind if it took all night. She didn’t tire of movement the way humans did and could walk for days and days and not feel any strain. And at least here under the stars, away from the chaos of the city, she could let her mind wander.

Fog shrouded the trees along the narrow, winding road. The air felt cooler here and settled over her skin in a fine spray. The dried husks fallen from the trees perfumed the air with a deep, earthy, menthol-like smell and crunched underneath her feet as she walked.

It should have been frightening, but Corinthe took comfort in the way the world had become muffled around her. She could almost forget where she was. The purple-tinted haze reminded her of the twilight colors of Pyralis. Of her
real
home.

She closed her eyes and reached out for the energy of the earth. The strong, heady scent of eucalyptus filled her lungs, but beneath the beauty, there was a harshness, a separation.

This was not her home. It could never be.

Headlights broke through the haze and rushed toward her. She stepped to the side of the road and watched the car barrel down on her. The lights grew brighter, so bright she had to shield her eyes as the car moved closer and slowed down.

In the driver’s seat sat the boy she’d seen earlier on the patio steps, the one wearing the Giants cap. The boy who’d taken her breath away.

The car stopped next to her and the driver’s-side window went down.

“You need a ride or anything?” the boy asked.

His voice was low and sort of gravelly, and it made the feeling of firefly wings in her stomach go crazy. There was an
energy
coming off him that made her feel curious, like the restless surge of strength she got when stitching from a storm. But she couldn’t accept his offer; the sensations inside her were too new, too confusing not to scare her. She needed to get away from everyone for a while.

“I’m fine, but thanks.”

The boy nodded, rolled up the window, and drove off, leaving Corinthe in the gloomy haze once again. Instead of making her feel better, though, the silence only amplified the anxious thoughts in her head.

The faint red glow of the car’s taillights faded around a bend in the road. Chaos swirled in Corinthe’s chest, as cold and cryptic as the fog.

Another task completed.

Another fate sealed.

She should have been relieved that it was over, but as the firefly battered her palm like a beating heart, Corinthe could feel something shifting inside her.