Effie Seabright, we’ve been fated to meet you for a long time.

… all sorts of wonderful things got washed up on the beach – crates of clothes and cutlery and children’s toys, boxes of engine parts and television screens and electrical wires like tangled snakes in...

I had never seen the view at this time before, at the very pinnacle of night when sunset was far behind us and dawn had not yet risen rosy-fingered from the horizon. The night was...

It didn’t feel like the Fates were looking over me that day. When I glanced up, I couldn’t see destiny’s threads tangling in the sky like the silk of a giant spider’s web, woven by...

Even now I ask myself, what would have happened if I had gone to the cove with Tansy that Thursday afternoon, instead of going to the beach? If I had stayed away from the boat...

I no longer hated the whining, menacing dragonfly we rode in, but admired its grace as we surged towards the clouds, the lights of Edinburgh twinkling below us like the starry constellations of a world...

Maybe they want us to feel uneasy. Maybe they think we’ll make a mistake if they’re constantly breathing down our necks.’ I shivered violently, as if I really could feel the hot, hungry breath of...

Maybe, if I had lied all those years ago, my life could have followed a very different path. But as it is I faithfully follow the long, long thread the Fates have woven for me.

Here was the puppeteer who was pulling strings all over the Empire. Didn’t he know that the Fates were the only ones who could tweak the threads of destiny?

If you continue to threaten us, I will act upon my threat.’ I felt silly using the precise language of bargaining dictators and gangsters, but they seemed to take it seriously. Stickings’ smirk almost completely...

If he came back in and ventured just a step too close to me, I would do it. I had been tempered in a furnace of Stickings’ making, and I had come out stronger.