one
Rivern
Present Day
It was an unremarkableturn until it wasn’t.
I felt it intrinsically—a crack, a chink in my armour. A feeling that was both foreign and strangely familiar at the same time, like coming home.
I had just celebrated my twenty-second birth, and by the Goddess’s will, that rotation was of no significance to the fae. So Ithought.
Everything within my marrow expanded that turn. The turn the bond took root. I stood taller. I became stronger. I spoke with more conviction. I knew I had to find it, the object of my heart.
Now completing my twenty-sixth rotation, my heart still aches—beating for something I cannot name, yet know without a doubt is the most breathtakingly beautiful artefact in all of existence.
Existence itself cannot compare to what is to come from the explosion of the worlds of bonded souls colliding.
The being who ruined me for all others.
I will hunt.
I will fight.
I will kill.
Because this time, the Goddess is wrong.
two
Dove
Three Rotations Past
THUD. The book falls, making my whole-body jolt. My hand moves to my racing heart and I’m frozen hearing the scattered beating below my pinafore.
“Goddess, why must you test me?” I question the library stacks around me, brimming with untouched stories. Dust their only companion inthis place.
I frown at the book near my leather booted feet. Giving it a slight nudge with the tip of my shoe, I push it to the side.Books rarely jump out at me while I am dusting the stacks. This is an odd occurrence.
Interest peeked, I crouch down.
“You should read it,”the childlike voice drifts through my mind.
Rolling my eyes at the dead sister who won’t leave me alone, I reach out a hand and run it over the worn pages, kicking up rotations worth of dust. I scrub at my face, brushing off any puffs of lingering flecks that make their way up towards my nose.
As the air clears, I look at a woman immortalised on paper. A familiar woman. “That’s her!” I whisper out loud to myself, the books my only companions in this place. Oh, and the sister lingering within my subconscious.
“Oooo, the statue in the tree,”Wren muses for only my ears.“I knew this library was haunted.”
“Yes, you are the one haunting it. Now let me concentrate,” I hiss. Technically, Wren is haunting me. She’s a pain in my arse, but she’s my pain in the arse and I wouldn’t have it any other way. What’s a girl to do when they lose their whole family at the age of eleven? You talk to your long lost twin sister in your head—that’s what happens. And that’s only the beginning.
Sighing loudly, I squint at the yellowing pages, trying to get a read on the symbols that move around the woman. But, no matter how hard I look, the letters make no sense to me.As far as I know, the Kingdom of Haven speaks the fae language, but maybe this language is even older?
Running my fingers around the words, my heart swells, my body feeling an odd need to know more, even though this text it different to any others I’ve seen before.
I flip the page over and find another picture. In black ink, sketched on once white paper, are small winged creatures. Eyes wide, I look closer. The small insect creatures almost look like butterflies, but they have non-existent bodies. They are all wings.
My finger itches to run over the creatures. “What are you?”
