The Clockwork Masquerade

Sometimes the greatest lie you tell yourself is that you can live without a dark past.
I feel as though something is watching me-close enough to breathe, distant enough to hide.
It wants me to uncover secrets, yet it fears the day I finally do.
As if it longs to be poisoned by my knowing.
And then there is Arden.
The damnation I never prepared for.
The slow poison meant to kill me long before I could poison the truth.
My life is splintering.
I am breaking-but I will not stop.
Not until the secrets bleed out of me,
not until my own blood runs dry.
My name is Winter Wineshard,
and I am a fallen angel-
born not to save faith,
but to set it alight.