Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) Read online

  Fate’s Surrender

  Eternal Sorrows, Book 3

  Sarra Cannon

  Copyright © 2021 by Sarra Cannon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art by Ravven.

  Created with Vellum

  To My Hearties Community

  Thank you for supporting me through the NaNoWriMo Diaries in 2020. This book was not an easy one to write, but your continued support meant the world to me.

  And to those of you still dreaming of finishing that first book.

  I believe in you. It’s your turn.

  Part One

  The Stone

  One

  Parrish

  Parrish Sorrows dreaded the darkness.

  Her stomach knotted at the first hint of sunset. A conditioned response.

  A reaction to weeks of hearing rotters out on the streets at night, searching for someone to eat.

  Tonight, though, hidden away in a neighborhood near the hospital, it was completely quiet.

  Almost peaceful, if such a thing still existed.

  The streets were dark, but the moon was full, illuminating the rows of houses in this part of the suburbs. Each one of these homes had been someone’s dream at one point. They had worked hard to decorate it and make it their own. They had made friends here and had children and created memories that they’d printed out and framed on the walls.

  Now, everything was dark and still, and despite how much she hated the sounds of rotters, the silence was unsettling. Had all the rotters for miles around been in that hospital yesterday?

  How many had they killed in order to survive?

  Parrish still hadn’t processed everything that happened at that hospital, but there was one thing she couldn’t get out of her head. It ran through her mind on a constant loop.

  Zoe is still alive.

  Could it be real?

  Lily had said a lot of things when Parrish had confronted her yesterday. She’d told them some elaborate story about an ancient evil necromancer many called The Dark One who’d tried to rule their original home world. About how the five of them—The Guardians—had somehow managed to trap the Dark One here in this foreign world, sealing away all magic forever.

  Or what they’d hoped would be forever.

  And yet, somehow, she’d managed to awaken her powers.

  Lily hadn’t told her exactly how that one had happened, but Parrish was pretty sure she’d pieced that part of the story together herself.

  They’d all been dreaming of Tobias for months. He’d been the one sent here from their home world to bring the fatalis stone to them. To check on them and make sure the Dark One was still imprisoned.

  Parrish knew somewhere deep down that Tobias had come here to this world many times. More than any of them remembered. And each time, the world had been peaceful. The seal held.

  Until now.

  This time, when he’d come through, Lily had slipped through with him, and everything had changed.

  Without his training and their memories, they were lost. They needed to get to this island they’d all been dreaming of, and their full memories and powers would be returned to them.

  Except there were two things standing in their way.

  First, they hadn’t actually found the fifth.

  Parrish had seen him in her dreams, though. He’d been there on the island with them. Not Lily.

  And wherever he was, he was likely alone and searching for them, too.

  Parrish wasn’t sure whether the magic of the island would work without the fifth or not. She had a feeling they all needed to be together, but how were they going to find him? He could be anywhere in the world.

  Second, Parrish couldn’t get her sister out of her mind.

  It had broken her heart to lose contact with Zoe, and even though everyone had told her to forget her sister and to let go, there had always been a part of Parrish that wanted to believe Zoe was still alive. That still felt connected to her in some way.

  Lily’s words had given her hope, but she’d also said the Dark One knew where to find Zoe.

  Had she been telling the truth? Or was this just another one of her elaborate lies? The next part of whatever trap she and the Dark One had set for them?

  Parrish shook her head and held back tears. She hadn’t wanted to be right about her, but Lily had been lying to them this whole time. She’d been playing them, and for what? To draw them into a trap? To kill them all?

  How many times had the rotters they’d faced been because of her?

  And why hadn’t she just slit their throats in the middle of the night, instead? Why make them face all of those zombies?

  Parrish still didn’t have the answer to those questions, but she felt the loss of Lily’s friendship more deeply than she thought she would.

  They’d trusted her. Brought her into the group like she was family, and she’d betrayed them every step of the way.

  Parrish ran her thumb across the smooth surface of the dark purple stone Lily had given her before the giant rotter had hauled her away.

  What was the importance of this stone? Why give it to her if she was working with the Dark One?

  And why did Parrish feel like she’d held it in her hand dozens of times before this?

  She stepped away from the front window and paced the floor of the living room. These questions were driving her insane, looping in her mind nonstop ever since the rest of their crew had gone to sleep.

  There was no way Parrish was sleeping tonight.

  Instead, she’d taken first watch in the small house where they’d decided to wait things out until morning.

  Whoever had lived in this house had completely emptied this front room of furniture and replaced it with a bunch of sleeping bags. From the looks of it, at least ten people had bunked out here.

  Where they were now, Parrish could only guess.

  For all she knew, they were among the survivors at Tank’s compound on the other side of town.

  But when her eyes drifted to the splintered back door that had been patched a couple of different times and was now stained with blood, she got the feeling whoever had been hiding out here had never made it to the compound.

  Parrish sighed and sat down, leaning her back against the wall.

  For what must have been the hundredth time that hour, she ran her finger across the infinity sign etched into the dark stone.

  An image flashed through her mind. A handsome man kneeling on the ground, a mound of fresh dirt like a makeshift grave behind him, fear blossoming in his eyes.

  She could almost feel his fear flow into her like a pulse of electricity.

  It scared her so much, she dropped the stone onto the floor with a thud and sat up.

  Something moved in the hallway, and she immediately brought her hand to the hilt of her katana, the blade already emitting a dim blue glow.

  Noah’s face appeared in a small stream of moonlight, and he raised his hands.

  “It’s just me,” he said softly. “Everything okay? I thought maybe you’d want to try to get some rest.”

  She let her hand fall from the katana, but her heart still raced. “I can’t even think about sleep right now,” she said, taking several deep breaths to try to clear the image of that man from her mind.

  Who was he? Another vision from her own past? Someone else tied to the stone?

  “Are you sure you don’t even want to try?” Noah asked. “Mor
ning’s going to come faster than you think.”

  Parrish shook her head and settled back against the wall.

  “I should be exhausted after everything that happened yesterday at the hospital, but I can’t get the whole thing out of my mind. How could we have been so stupid? The enemy was right there with us the whole time, and we didn’t even know it.”

  “Well, we kind of did,” Noah said. He leaned down and picked up the fatalis stone before sitting on the floor across from her. “As much as we didn’t want to believe it, we all knew we might be walking into some kind of trap.”

  “Yeah, but I never dreamed it was going to be that bad,” she said, shuddering as she remembered the horrible things they’d faced inside that hospital. She’d almost lost Noah back there. How would she have kept going without him? “How are you feeling, by the way? How’s your head?”

  “It hurts,” he said, gently touching his head. “To put it mildly. That’s why I can’t sleep. I can’t seem to shake this headache.”

  “Did you try healing yourself?” she asked.

  “I don’t think it works on me,” he said. “Which kind of sucks, to be honest.”

  He said it with a soft laugh, and their eyes met in the semi-darkness.

  “What about the supplies we grabbed from the med room?” she asked. “I’m sure we have some good pain killers in there if you need them.”

  “Everything in there is too strong. I don’t want to dull my reactions in case we have to move quickly,” he said. “I’ll take something when we get back to the safety of the compound if it’s not better by then.”

  She nodded toward the hallway. “Karmen and Crash?”

  “Sleeping,” he said. “Lucky jerks.”

  She laughed. “I would love to be sleeping right now.”

  He patted the floor next to him and lay back, head on the floor and knees raised. She joined him, his hand instantly reaching for hers as they lay there side by side.

  They lay together in silence for a while, and Parrish was suddenly reminded of that night when they lay just like this in the grass, listening to Zoe play her violin.

  She’d been so nervous to be that close to him. She’d wanted him to kiss her or hold her hand, and the thought of it had nearly taken her breath away.

  Life had been so simple back then.

  “Noah, do you think Zoe really is still alive in New York like Lily said?” She turned her head to look at him. She wanted to see his reaction. “Could that really be true? Or do you think she was just playing with me?”

  Noah frowned, avoiding her eyes.

  She shouldn’t have asked him. She already knew what everyone in their group was going to say. No one wanted to risk New York. Not after yesterday.

  “I want to believe it just as much as you do,” he said finally. “But even if it is true, what can we really do about it before Lily or the Dark One have a chance to get to her?”

  Parrish did her best to listen to him with an open mind, but she didn’t want to hear any protests. She just wanted reassurance.

  “We talked openly about where Zoe is, which means Lily knows exactly where to go. She has a head start, and she’s on the Dark One’s side, which means she can just waltz into the city and go straight to the hotel. There’s literally nothing standing in her way. If we try to rescue Zoe, we’ll have to fight our way through God knows what, Parrish. We don’t stand a chance at getting to your sister first.”

  “So then why tell me?” Parrish asked, glad for the darkness so he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “Just to torture me? To set some kind of trap for us in New York? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Noah said. “But there’s no doubt in my mind Lily or one of the Dark One’s other allies will be at Zoe’s room before the night is over. The real question is whether they’ll let her live once they have her.”

  Parrish blinked back tears. “You’re saying you think it’s too late, then? So, what? You don’t want to go with me to New York, anymore?”

  She reached over and took the fatalis stone from him. Somehow, it comforted her to have it.

  “I didn’t say that. I’m with you all the way, but if we’re still planning on going after her, we need a better plan than just fighting our way through hell and hoping for the best.”

  She sighed and released the tension she’d been holding in her shoulders. She hadn’t realized just how scared she’d been that he would refuse to go with her after what happened.

  “So, we figure out a plan,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Together we can do anything. I’m so glad I didn’t lose you in that hospital. I was so scared, Noah.”

  “Me too,” he said in a whisper. “If I’d had any idea just how much planning Lily must have done to set that trap for us, I never would have agreed to it. I still don’t understand how she set all of that up ahead of time, but she must have had some way to communicate with the rotters, even when she was there inside the compound with us.”

  “What I don’t understand is why Crash had been dreaming about Lily in the first place,” she said. “He was right about the rest of us, and he seemed sure the fifth was hiding in that closet. He dreamed about her. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Lily wasn’t the one I was dreaming about in that closet.” Crash stood in the doorway leading back to the small bedrooms.

  Parrish sat up with a start, her katana glowing again.

  “A little warning would be nice, guys. It’s not nice to just sneak up on people in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.”

  Crash smiled and shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Noah looked up, confused. “Wait, what do you mean Lily wasn’t the one in the closet? There was someone else there?”

  He ran a hand through his messy black hair and shook his head. “I’ve been going through it in my head, over and over, trying to make sense of what happened that night we met her.”

  He sat down across from the two of them, and Parrish pulled her knees under her body to make room for him. When he sat down, she noticed that the lightning bolt on the fatalis stone began to glow brighter.

  “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” Crash said. “I think Lily could see inside my dreams. She must have seen the fifth in the closet, and she knew from watching my dreams that for whatever reason, I couldn’t see the fifth’s face. Unlike the rest of you, I didn’t have any solid information about who or where they were. She took advantage of that and set herself up to seem like the fifth. I think she basically recreated the situation from my dream and made me believe it. Then she used me to get to the rest of you.”

  Parrish sat in silence, taking in this new information and trying to piece together the puzzle for herself.

  “So she set all of this up and then acted like a scared victim so we’d welcome her in and take care of her,” Noah said.

  “This whole time we looked at her like she was the weakest one in our group,” Parrish said, frustration building up inside her. She wanted to scream. “She acted like she’d been through some kind of major trauma and needed us to take care of her, when what she was really doing was plotting how to kill us. I mean, how much of what we’ve been through over the past few weeks is because of her? The rats? The horde on the drive here? The super zombies on the roof that night in DC were definitely because of her, right?”

  “Definitely,” Crash said, nodding. “She created them, somehow, from regular rotters. And then she did it again before we got to the hospital. I don’t know when or how, but it was definitely her this whole time, no doubt with some help from the Dark One herself. That’s what Lily called her, right? The Dark One?”

  Parrish and Noah both nodded. They’d gone over everything Lily said back at the hospital several times, but it all still seemed so unreal.

  “So, what do we do now?” Parrish asked, knowing there was no easy answer to that question. “Why has all of this been put on our shoulders?”

  She ran her thumb across the infinity symbol again, watching the light inside flicker a
s if there was a fire inside it.

  “I mean, why do we have these strange abilities if we don’t even know how to use them?” she asked. “What are we supposed to do with them? We obviously aren’t normal humans. If these visions we’ve had are to be believed, we never were human, which don’t even get me started on that. But if we’re here for a reason or if our sole job is supposed to be to stop the Dark One, we’re doing a pretty crap job of it so far. Is there even much of a world to save, anymore?”

  She thought of Zoe all alone in that hotel room. What if Lily had already gotten to her by now? What then?

  “There are survivors everywhere right now,” Crash said, patting her knee.

  When he touched her, the light inside the stone flashed brighter for a moment.

  “We might not be able to see them or talk to them right now, but I believe there are compounds and groups like the one we found here that have found a way to survive,” he said. “If we can help save them, it will be worth it.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Karmen said.

  Parrish looked up as Karmen walked over and sat down next to her, looping her arm with Parrish’s arm, as if they were the best of friends.

  Which, in a world where nearly everyone else was dead, she supposed they were.

  “What do you mean?” Noah asked.

  “We didn’t come from this world, did we?” Karmen said. “I don’t understand everything we’ve seen in these weird visions, but I know for certain the red sand beach I’ve seen over and over isn’t here in this world. And the Dark One didn’t come from here, either. Neither did Lily.”

  “And neither did we,” Crash said. “She’s right.”

  “So, what does that mean?” Parrish asked.

  “It means this goes further than just being put here to save this world,” Karmen said. “It means there’s at least one other entire world full of people that are counting on us to keep them safe, too. Our real home world.”

  Parrish took a deep breath, the sudden weight of this impossible responsibility falling on her shoulders. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew that she was supposed to be the one leading this group. She obviously wasn’t equipped for it. She’d never been a leader.