Fate's Revenge (Twisted Fate, Book 4)

Prologue

Dark and light.

Good and evil.

Heaven.

Hell.

A few weeks ago, this seemed like either-or, black or white. It isn't. Heaven has a new generation of angels: the Pure Souls. They are humans who die as teenagers and begin an afterlife enrolled at Glory Academy, Heaven's school run by angels to teach them to be angels. Each Pure Soul was born with a portion of purity—from me. The light that had been born with my conception was too strong. The outer layer fractured to land in new souls disproportionately, small and large. Some souls don't have enough purity. They are the Dark Souls—Heaven's rejects, if you will—and attend Hell's Fire, Glory Academy's counterpart just outside of Hell.

They all exist because of me, live through my light instead of Heaven's Glory, and expect me to lead them. To what, I don't know. Against Darkness? Against each other? Realizing their existence was like becoming a mother without having to endure the labors of childbirth. How was I supposed to choose which group to lead? Meeting them both didn't help. Dark didn't mean bad and light didn't equal truth. Death, which I'd experienced three times before the boy I loved died so I could live, was easier.

Even then, love was the simplest of all the mysteries I'd found myself at the center of.

That's where I thought my answers would be when this started.

The boy I loved was an angel—a Brother, which was the group at the top of the angel hierarchy—who couldn't die because he was never born but created. My soul discovered his identity whilst disconnected from my body, but when I opened my eyes upon returning, I found betrayal. The boy, the angel forbidden to love, was kissing my best friend. That felt worse than anything Darkness could provoke, and I realized that death wasn't just easier.

It is kinder.