Fate's Revenge (Twisted Fate, Book 4)

Chapter One

In Hidden Springs, children can learn to figure skate when they are three.

For two years, I lived on the ice during the winter months, either at the rink or in our backyard where my father flooded it with water and waited for it to freeze. When I turned five, I prepared for my first recital. I was so excited that the skates were on my feet as soon as I entered the building. After all, I'd prepared for two years. With guards on the blades, it was hard to walk. I fell going to the washroom and escaped the embarrassing ordeal with a cut lip, a bump on my head, and the discovery that I was what my parents lovingly referred to as a bleeder.

I never went skating again.

Doctors called it transference, like somehow the bathroom was at fault for my short-lived figure skating career.

When I woke to find that Mike was kissing Suzie, I felt like that.

Their betrayal felt like Heaven's sin, and it was the last I was willing to bear. They weren't even trying to hide it. To be fair, neither knew that I was aware of what they were doing, never mind the fact that they were doing it right in front of me, but still. It didn't change the fact that was happening.

It made me want to disappear again. Become blissfully gone. But to leave, I had to figure out how to escape. More importantly, I had to determine what to do once I was free. Go home to my parents where the Brothers could find me? Run?

What would I do if I did stay? Pretend it hadn't happened or had been happening, or whatever? I didn't work that way, though I was out of the energy it took for another confrontation after fighting so hard to get back to my body. If possible, I felt even more drained than before I had left Hell's Fire, and that said a lot. I wasn't stupid enough to think this—whatever this was that I had witnessed—was a one-time thing between them, so what was I supposed to do now?

Opening my eyes wasn't an option, yet it was unavoidable. Sound and imagination were impossible to shut off. Every breath, every kiss, and every whisper that Mike and Suzie made in my presence while thinking me gone echoed in my head, making me imagine more than I hoped was really going on beyond the barrier of my eyelids. Oh, sure, they whispered about it being forbidden—angels aren't allowed to be in love with a mortal, not in the romantic sense—but that didn't deter their actions.

It was inescapable.

I opened my eyes enough to see but not be seen and hoped that that would quiet the surround-sound of their movements in my head. No luck. While the room was just as I'd left it, all white with just a single bed, a dresser, and a desk, Mike and Suzie were the only spots of color, making them stand out. There was an attached bathroom and somehow, after a special request, a room for my laundry, but I couldn't distract myself by looking in there from my perch on the bed. Not when I couldn't move without giving myself away. Why couldn't the walls be red? Fiery like in Hell's Fire? I used to think of white as purity—life—but in some cultures, white meant death.

Given what I was witnessing, it felt appropriate.

The end.

At least, it was the end of a relationship, though it seemed to be the start of another.

"I have to go," Mike said. His words were muffled against Suzie's blonde hair as he held her near, and her cheek smushed against his chest. "The Brothers have a meeting that started about five minutes ago."

"I—is it about Alyssa?" Suzie asked and lifted her head.

To her credit, she sounded genuinely concerned, which should make me grateful, but I was too numb to process what I was feeling. Never mind their betrayal; I had just merged my soul with my body.