Page 7 of A Match Made in Error

A ring of sigils wraps around the basin, bearing the twelve sigils of Fate—love, honesty, devotion, choice, sacrifice, growth, safety, passion, understanding, resilience, emotional intuition, and balance. After rolling, these too will light up, showing the traits the couple possesses in their pairing. Before the Festival, hopeful contestants apply, and the Moirai make potential pairings based on these traits, but rolling the dice reveals what Fate has decided.

It shows if the pairing has been truly blessed.

For a month after matching, the pair will cohabitate (usually in the female’s home in the case of heteros—a win for me because the estate Angora’s father bought her has a natural hot spring in the yard). At the month’s end, after trials and bonding activities, the couples all roll again in the Well of Possibilities. If their emotional resonance score is eighteen or higher, then the Moirai offer to seal their souls as mates.

A shiver snakes down my spine, and I forcibly pull my eyes away from the arena. I think back to my first bonding ceremony. Poppy by my side, supportive as ever. The die warm in my hand. Another wave of shivers rolls down my spine, pebbling my flesh as I remember the strangling sensation I felt at that Festival.

In simpler terms? I was nervous.

My lineage ruined me for love long before Fate ever tried to fix me up.

That final ceremony at my first Festival had been brutal. To know how disappointed Poppy was, not with me, but with the situation and her lack of a soulmate, was crushing. She was my friend, and I knew how badly she wanted love. She’s probably grateful now that her first Festival didn’t work out. Fate knows she deserves far better than me. And I’m glad the other two didn’t, because those two asshats didn’t deserve her either.

Poppy and I had stood side by side that day, my palms sweating and heart racing like I was facing battle instead of potential love. I’d felt the truth gnawing at me then: If I can’t love the girl beside me, Fate help me, maybe I can’t love anyone at all.

I’d laughed it off, of course. Blamed the nerves. Blamed the lighting. Blamed anything except the real root of it. My parents’ sham love showed me the cracks that could live in a relationship, and I’ve been trying to hide the fissures it made in my heart ever since.

Shit. This is getting dark. I’m here to get ass, not psychoanalyze myself.

My eyes lock on a wave of chestnut hair, and the warm eyes that sit just below a panel of wispy bangs. There she is. Elephant ear in hand and a forced smile on her pink lips. Poppy moves through the crowd, her face contorting in annoyance when another Festival-goer bumps into her. Her lips move in an insult, coaxing a laugh from me. Tension melts away from my shoulders.

She showed up. Of course she did. Poppy always does right by me, even when I don’t deserve it. Which is why she’s standing here in the crowd with her hair catching every lantern flame as if she belonged in some painter’s fever dream.

I try not to stare—Fate knows Angora will read into it and start another fight if she catches me—but it’s impossible not to notice how bright and steady she looks against the drab revelry around her.

“Poppy! Over here!” I call out, and Angora goes silent and rigid beside me.

Poppy’s eyes fix on me, and an exasperated smile spreads across her full lips. I feel steadier now, the slight tremor in my hands ceasing when I pull them out of Angora’s claws to greet Poppy. Her scent wraps around me: warm vanilla sugar, cloves, and something I can only describe as homey. It’s calming me more than the two shots of hundred-proof bourbon I threw back before leaving my house this afternoon.

“Finally, I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.” I can hear the wishful thinking in her whispered tone, and when she pulls back, the gentle crease in her brows tells me she’s worried about me. Poppy pulls away, eyes flicking to my current girlfriend. “Good afternoon, Angora.”

“I’m going to check in.” Angora ignores Poppy entirely. “You should too.” This command is not so subtly directed at me.

My hand catches her around the wrist as she spins, and the iron of her dainty bracelets burns against my flesh. “Aren’t you going to acknowledge Poppy?” Even though it hurts, I hold on, unwavering in my subtle defense of my best friend.

The crowd continues around us, carrying ale steins and oversized pretzels, completely oblivious to the battle of wills taking place between us. The wind blows, sending Poppy’s hair flying, carrying her vanilla scent around me in a tornado.

“Riven, it’s fine.” Poppy’s hand rests on the arm I’m holding onto Angora with, her stacked gold rings cool against my skin. “You’re going to melt the flesh from your fingers,” she whispers, eyes on the smoke coming from my hand. Of course she remembers iron burns fae when my own girlfriend does not.

“Angora.” My voice is warning, and I can barely hear the hushed whispers of Poppy’s healing spells over her dramatic sigh.

“Hello, Poppy,” she says without looking back at her. “I’m going to go check in.” Her gaze falls over me. The hair on my neck rises. “I expect you to do the same in the next five ticks.” Her hand rips from my hold, and as soon as she’s gone, I’m already calculating how I’ll get back into her good graces. Flowers, for sure. A back massage, maybe. But, in all reality, once Fate matches us, she’ll be too excited to be angry with me, and I’ll be in the clear for weeks. As high maintenance as she is, she is also easy and predictable.

“Someone’s in a good mood.” Poppy’s tone is snarky. Her nails, manicured but short and practical, rip a piece of deep-fried dough from her confection. Powdered sugar flies when I snatch it away. I put it in my mouth and smirk down at her before she even registers it’s gone. “Curse your fae speed,” she grumbles as she rips another bite off with her teeth, leaving no room for me to steal it unless I want to press my lips to hers and tear it from her teeth. Which she should know is not beneath me. I’ve done crazier things to get what I want; that’s for certain.

An orcish male steps up beside us and, like a town crier, starts telling the story of the Moirai, a story we’ve all heard dozens of times and still stop and become enthralled by it again. “They say the Moirai were not born, but chosen.” The crowd ooohs, and he gives a cheeky grin, drinking in their adoration for his dramatics. “Three witches, bound not by blood but by Fate itself. The Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone—each drawn from the realm when the last grows too old to carry the weight of destiny. The Crone selects her successor before she steps down, and the cycle continues, endless and quiet, like a story that never quite reaches its final page.” He pauses long enough for me to look over and see Poppy completely captivated by his storytelling. “No one knows how long they serve. Decades. Centuries. Perhaps longer. Time behaves differently around the Moirai, bending in subtle ways, as if even it is reluctant to rush them.” He blows on his hand, and a trail of pixie dust glitters in the air around him. “Once, long ago, their power was reserved for kings and queens. They stitched alliances with marriages, ended wars with whispered prophecies, and decided the fate of entire bloodlines with the roll of a single enchanted die.” He casts a die of his own out, and children scramble at his feet to retrieve it. “But the world grew larger. Messier. And so they created the Festival of Fates to open the arms of destiny to common hearts, not just crowned ones. With it came a month of trials. Of bonds. Of love tested under magic and moonlight. A chance, they claimed, for anyone to be chosen.” The column of Poppy’s throat bobs, and I know what she is thinking. Everyone but me. I reach out for her hand, but she tucks it into her pocket before I can. I hate how much this torments her, and I hate even more that I contributed to it all those years ago. But it was for the best, she has to know that now, she deserves someone better than me. When I entered the Festival back then, I had wanted love, and meeting Poppy, someone so deserving of it, made me realize how unready for it I was. Thanks to the example my parents set, I probably always will be. I was built for battle, bad decisions in bar bathrooms, and fleeting pleasures in dimly lit taverns, not for soft mornings in bed and lifelong vows. “The Moirai insist they do not control love. Only reveal it. But they control other things. They are known to be mercurial. Changeable. Long ago, they were fond of altering the rules mid-game, rewriting traditions, introducing new trials simply because they could. Their reasons were rarely explained. Their motives, even less so. The only certainty is this: when the Moirai intervene, no one leaves unchanged. And in the name of destiny, design, and divine amusement, they always get the final word.” He throws his hands down, releasing a puff of smoke that, when it clears, takes him with it. The children cry out in amusement while the adults, Poppy and I included, move back into the crowd.

“Having second thoughts yet?” Poppy asks.

“Second thoughts?” I feel my smile tilt. I know how it looks, the weapon it is to have my lips tugged up in this lazy and lethal way. “I don’t regret things until someone’s tangled in my sheets and asking me about feelings.”

“Riven.” Her tone is cautioning, and I know what she’s warning me of without her saying it plainly.

“I’ll be fine, and if this goes badly, at least I’ll enjoy the physical consequences.”

“I wish you would think this through.” She stops and snaps her fingers. Her magic, glittering and familiar as my own hand, sends her trash into a nearby receptacle, freeing up her hands to press into my shoulders. She looks up at me from beneath thick lashes, eyes passing gently back and forth between mine, like she might be able to read the coding of my soul if she looks hard enough. It’s almost intimate. “If you piss off the Moirai and use their stage in a way they find blasphemous, they will curse your love life.”

A snort escapes me despite my best effort to smother it. Like I care about that.