Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) Sarra Cannon (best english books to read txt) 📖

was like she made it happen by worrying, because sure enough, she’d get up there on stage or in the audition and mess up the parts she’d never once messed up in rehearsal.

There was no sense behind it, except that she’d psyched herself out and sabotaged her own performance.

Or at least that’s what her teacher told her she was doing.

They’d had to work on that aspect of performance more than her actual technique sometimes.

Her mother would say, Perfect technique means nothing if you can only do it in practice. Performance is the only time it matters. Fail in performance, and you might as well always be a failure.

It had been a difficult lesson to learn as a five-year-old back in the day, but Zoe had put her whole heart into mastering her own worry and fear.

By the time she was eight, she had figured out the trick.

All she had to do was learn to trust herself.

When she worried, she wasn’t trusting her own talent or her joy. She wasn’t trusting her practice and the ability of her hands and body and fingers to remember the music. She was trusting her fear.

And fear always betrayed you.

It was in its very nature to betray.

Instead, she had learned to trust her joy. Her pure passion for playing and creating. Over time, her music had become an extension of herself, so when she stood on stage to play, there was no fear. Only trust.

The funny thing was, this was not a lesson she’d learned from her mom or dad. They were both amazing musicians, but neither one of them had ever reached the level of fame and notoriety they deserved.

Zoe’s mom had stopped performing professionally over the past few years, but it hadn’t taken much to understand why she’d never been chosen as the lead soprano at the Metropolitan for a show like La Traviata or Madame Butterfly the way she’d always dreamed.

Her mother was exceptionally talented, but she wanted it too badly. In her performances, she let her fear of never being good enough guide her. She tried too hard.

Her father, a cellist, had done the same thing. When he practiced and thought no one was listening, the beauty of his music would bring you to tears.

But when he played for others, he seemed to forget who he was. He focused on the performance and what others would think, rather than the music.

He focused on what he wanted to get from it, rather than what he wanted to give to others by playing from the heart. That was the best way Zoe could think to describe it, but she’d learned not to give her opinion when it came to their music.

Her mother, in particular, was never one to take criticism well.

The one time Zoe had tried to tell her about letting go of the fear, she’d thought her mom was going to hit her, she got so angry.

“I’ve been performing my entire life,” she’d said. “I don’t need a six-year-old telling me how to improve. Now, leave me alone.”

So Zoe had learned to keep her opinions to herself, and instead, she’d focused on not making the same mistakes. She’d learned to just be herself and to think about what she could give to others, rather than what she might get if she did a good job.

That was a lesson she’d learned from Parrish.

Her older sister was never afraid to just be herself, no matter what anyone else thought of her. She stood up for people even when she knew she wouldn’t get any kind of reward. She did the right thing when no one was watching.

She was the same person in the quiet privacy of her bedroom as she was when she stepped out into the world.

Zoe had some idea that Parrish was unapologetically herself because she thought no one was watching her.

But Zoe had been watching.

Learning.

So, over time, that’s how she had mastered her fear of performance and had become one of the best young violinists in the world.

That should have carried over to amazing patience and willpower when it came to dealing with the world as it was now, too, but waiting for David to come back was bringing her to the edge.

Something had happened during those weeks in the hotel room alone. Something inside her had come slightly unhinged. She wasn’t sure she could survive that again. He had to come back.

She itched to open those curtains and just take a look.

What if he was out there on the ground, needing her help? She wasn’t sure why he had no voice, but so far, they’d only been able to communicate by him writing things down or, more recently, in their minds.

But if he was hurt, maybe he couldn’t use his powers to reach out to her.

After another half hour of waiting as patiently as she could, she had practically convinced herself that David was either dead or dying.

There was no reason for it to have taken this long. Parrish and the others were expecting him to reach out around noon, but now it was nearly two in the afternoon. Zoe had no way of reaching them on her own. Not that she knew of, anyway. She needed him, and without David, her sister might never find her.

Zoe curled up on the couch with a blanket tight around her body. She hummed quietly, trying anything to get her mind off those curtains and what might be happening beyond them.

She closed her eyes and tried to rest, but that didn’t work either.

Instead, she stood and paced the floor. She even tried sitting down in a meditation pose and reaching out to Parrish on her own.

Nothing worked, and the more time went by, the more she started to worry.

Trust him. Trust Parrish. Don’t trust your fear.

She repeated this to herself over and over, but by the time another hour had come and gone, she couldn’t wait any longer.

The mantra in her head had turned from trust to panic. Something must have gone terribly