Ruled by Fate (The Forbidden Tears #1)

Chapter One The Fox and the Phantom

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“Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail.”

John Milton, Paradise Lost

The golden quiet of the woods was interrupted only by the sound of feet rhythmically pounding the trail. White shoes flashed against the dark path as the girl ran in silence, crunching fallen leaves into the earth, each fleeting step echoing in the idyllic stillness of nature.

A trilling, high-octave wail blasted through the air, frightening birds from their branches as the latest pop hit declared that the singer didn’t want to go to Heaven without raising Hell.

She careened forward and stumbled over a rock, dropping her phone in the process. She spat a lock of hair and a good quantity of leaves out of her mouth as the song continued to blare at top volume.

“Well this was always going to happen,” she muttered, groping around on the path until she found her phone. She’d made the mistake of letting her best friend, Sherry, use it a few months back. When it was returned, she discovered her alarms and ringtones had all been changed to hilarious effect. Siri wouldn’t stop calling her “ Sexy Beast ,” and she hadn’t figured out how to change it back yet.

She glanced at the screen and groaned. It was her therapist. Again. He probably wanted to have another conversation involving the phrase, “So tell me again about this… light .” That was the thing she hated most — the weighted pause before the last word. It made therapists sound almost… patronizing.

She closed her eyes as she answered and tried to inject as much level-headed cheerfulness into her tone as she could muster. “Hi, Dr. Rogers. How’s it going?”

“Hello, Brianna. I’m glad you picked up. How are things going with you?”

Another classic therapist move — answering a question with a question.

“You missed your last two sessions,” he continued. “I was getting worried.”

“Oh, no need to worry. Everything’s fine.” She yanked off her shoe to remove a pebble, immediately falling backward off the decaying log she’d used as a seat. A blanket of moss cushioned the fall and her hand landed in something she very much hoped was tree sap.

“Brie? Are you there?” Dr. Rogers’ voice crackled through the phone.

“Yes, yes, I’m here!” she said, popping up again. “I’m sorry for missing our appointments. I was just, um… packing, you know. Super busy with the move.”

The move had been a constant source of discussion for the last few months. She remembered the day she’d told him, the way he’d paused in surprise beside the office aquarium, staring at her intensely, unaware that he was tragically overfeeding his fish.

“So, you’re sticking with your decision? You’re taking a step back from therapy?” he asked. He’d never say she was quitting. He’d never say she was walking away. Words were weapons, and he handled his with the greatest of care. It was a trait they didn’t have in common.

She tensed ever so slightly, wiped her hand on some leaves, then walked determinedly down the trail. “I prefer to think of it as a graduation.”

There was a long pause before he spoke. “Brie, let me be frank with you.” She heard the familiar creaking of his chair. She could picture exactly how he was leaning back and steepling his fingers to make his point. “I know you keep saying you’re ‘cured,’ but as I keep trying to tell you, grief is a journey, not a destination. There is no ‘cured.’ And the fact that you insisted for so long that what you saw was real—”

“I know it wasn’t real,” she interrupted flatly. “It was a grief manifestation. Something my brain invented to deal with the tragedy. I accept that. I accept that there was nothing supernatural about the accident. I accept that the man who came to save me wasn’t real. Just like I accept that instead of dealing with me himself, my dad hired you.”

Silence.

She cast a quick look to the heavens, cheeks flushing in shame. The man didn’t deserve her anger. The truth was, he’d been nothing but supportive ever since her father had decided he no longer knew what to do with her or her insistence that beasts made of shadow had attacked her mother and a man made of light had driven them away. Dr. Rogers had been patient and kind, and he never once said she was crazy, which she very much appreciated. Especially considering how often she wondered if she was.

But it had been years, and she was done rehashing the past. She wanted to look forward.

“Look, I’m fine,” she said, preempting his attempts to push the party line. “I’ve done everything you’ve suggested. I kept diaries, journaled my dreams, considered yoga—”

“Are you going to the waterfall again?”

She flashed a look up the trail before glancing suspiciously at her phone. What number am I thinking of?

“Brie?” he asked.

“No, I’m not going to the waterfall,” she said quickly, covering the receiver as her heart hammered away in her chest. “Haven’t you been listening? I’m done with all that. I’m at home now — packing. I’m listening to the soothing sounds of a South African rainforest on YouTube and considering getting an emotional support animal. A dog. Or maybe a ferret. I hear they come in ferret.”

There was a scarcely audible sigh. “You know I’m only asking because—”

“I know why you’re asking,” she interrupted, “and I’m fine, really. Now I promise I’ll check in when I get to Virginia, but this line is full of static, and I’m going through a tunnel—”

“Wait, I thought you were—”

She hung up quickly, biting at her lower lip.

That could have been handled better.

She slipped her phone into her pocket and continued down the trail.

A few minutes later, she cleared the last of the trees and pulled in a deep breath, letting the mist from the churning water whisper gently across her face. The sunlight bounced off the water and dazzled her eyes for a moment before she quietly spoke. “Hi, Mom.”

She never felt close to her mother at the cemetery. But here in the woods, in her favorite childhood spot, the place they were headed when she died, Brie felt her presence.

She settled cross-legged on a smooth, flat stone overlooking the falls and gazed over the tranquil scene. Splashes of water chimed sweetly below her. Time ceased to matter, as though the world stopped at the entrance of the forest, like all the problems that plagued her on the other side had simply melted away. As she watched, a silver fox loped out of the underbrush and cocked its head, studying her. Brie was taken aback — the creature had one green eye and one blue. She stared, astonished, unable to believe it would venture so close. Just as she was about to move, it winked.

“ Did you just wink at me?” she asked incredulously. “ Can foxes wink?”

Sherry is never going to believe this.

The fox almost seemed to smirk before skittering away into the trees.

“Did you see that, Mom?” she whispered, waiting a moment for an answer she knew would never come. She shook her head as though to dispel the curious incident, deliberately not thinking about how many similar and strange things had happened to her in these woods.

“Sherry can’t wait for me to get to Virginia,” she continued softly. “She’s all excited about some guy she met named Mike. And she swears I’ll love my new place. She went on and on about ‘cottage vibes.’ You know me. As long as there’s a bed and a coffee maker, I’m fine.”

She went silent, watching the play of water over the rocks and checking the treeline for overly friendly woodland creatures before continuing. “I don’t know how Dad will deal with both of us gone. I’ll try to come home as often as possible to take care of him, but you know how busy the first year of this job is supposed to be.”

She reached for the chain that had been placed around her neck on that terrible day. There hadn’t been a single moment that she’d taken it off. Not ever .

“I miss you, Mom. All the time.”

She brought the pendant to her lips and kissed it gently before tucking it back under her shirt. It wasn’t until she’d risen to leave that she turned around with a passing thought.

“Mom, since you’re up in heaven, do me a favor, would you? If you ever see that ‘guardian angel’ guy again? Cameron? Punch him in the face.”

With a last look at the lovely waterfall splashing into the pool below, she inhaled a deep breath of warm, fragrant air and started to run home.

She didn’t see the palm-sized golden glimmer, near- indistinguishable from the sunlight, tuck itself away behind the trunk of a pine as she ran off.

She never saw it. It made sure of that.

? ? ?

It was another half hour before Brie arrived at her apartment, red-cheeked and gasping for breath. She hung her keys on the hook by the door and made straight for the refrigerator to down a protein-laced tropical fruit amalgamation Sherry once told her was indispensable for her electrolytes. She generally made it a practice to do as Sherry commanded, assured that her best friend’s penchant for storing vast amounts of pseudo-useful information would see her through.

She wandered into the living room, making a mental note of what had yet to be packed. There wasn’t much. Although she’d been there a year and a half, she’d never fully moved into the place. Aside from a series of sun-bleached photographs, a rapidly decaying Ficus tree constituted one of her only attempts to nest. She stroked one of the lank, yellow leaves before fetching a glass of water. The little tree shuddered pitifully as she poured it in.

“There you go, little one,” she whispered encouragingly. “You’ve got this.” She’d read online that houseplants lived longer if you talked to them. After a moment of indecision, she poured in the rest of her fruit smoothie as well.

Couldn’t hurt.

She checked her phone — two voice messages. She put it on speaker.

The first was from Sherry.

“ Darling! You need to get here already. You know what happens when you’re not around to rein in my genius designs. Sidenote: Is there any such thing as too pink? I’m looking at an ottoman that would, in the wrong hands, be frankly shocking. ”

Brie grinned, rolled her eyes, and started putting the few personal items that decorated her living room into a cardboard box. Sherry was in the middle of another interior design project, and Brie knew her opinion wasn’t required. Her best friend was merely looking for an excuse to go full-magenta on some poor, unsuspecting home decor as she deconstructed, then reconstructed her apartment into something resembling an eccentric Vogue Home Edition centerfold.

“ I can’t wait to see you, girl. Call me the second you get into town! ”

Brie clicked on the next message.

“ Hi, Brie. It’s your dad. ”

She almost dropped the picture she’d taken off the wall.

“ I was hoping… I was just wondering if you could stop by. You know, on your way out of town. We… I haven’t… Well, just come on by if you can. ”

She looked down at the picture in her hand. It was one of the few she’d taken from her dad’s house when she’d moved out, and the image had long since been seared into her mind. It was the simplicity that captured her most. The same photograph could have been hanging in a thousand other happy homes, and this one just happened to belong to her. It was a family portrait—one of their very first. Her mother and father were holding their newborn baby, gazing adoringly at the tiny bundle as she reached up a hand to them in return.

She loved this photograph. It was a perfect moment, frozen in time. Her throat grew thick with emotion. She wrapped it carefully in several scarves and sweatshirts and placed it at the top of a box, determined that it would not break in transit. Then she decided to save the rest of the packing for later and headed for the bath.

One final bath. I don’t even know if the new place has a tub.

She turned on the faucet and waited for the water to warm up, considering her reflection in the mirror. It was no wonder it was so hard for her father. She’d always been the spitting image of her mom. They shared the same long, chestnut hair, the same wide-set green eyes, and the same mouth, slightly upturned at the corners, as though always on the edge of laughing. She’d even inherited her mother’s dancer figure, though none of her inherent grace.

She let out a quiet sigh, her father’s voicemail still ringing in her ears. Considering the level of complexity and nuance her therapist had delighted in heaping on every situation, the way Brie saw it, the problem was rather simple: After the accident, she’d gotten help. Her dad hadn’t.

In the quaking aftermath, as she had wrestled with the flickering memories of angels and death, her father sank into a kind of unremarkable depression that left him wandering around the house with a bottle permanently affixed to his hand. For a long time, she’d resented him. Bitterly. She was the one who’d been in the car. She was the one who’d had half a windshield pulled from her chest. She was the one who’d been sentenced to weekly therapy sessions in the years that followed. But as time progressed and the relationship deteriorated, she’d come to realize an important lesson: it was impossible to resent a person so truly, incurably sad.

She looked after him instead, watching as he buried himself in work and neglected everything else. She secretly restocked the refrigerator and made deals with the electric company to have his bills forwarded to her new address. She took the slow route through nursing school so she could care for him, watching Sherry graduate ahead of her and move out to Virginia, escaping the little Atlanta suburb they’d been so anxious to leave since they were children. Anger was replaced with acceptance, even if that acceptance slowly chipped away at her heart.

She understood when he didn’t show up at her graduation. She understood when he forgot appointments and birthdays. She understood when he couldn’t teach her how to drive. He was less understanding when Sherry taught her instead, and they plowed into her neighbor’s mailbox. But understanding didn’t make it any easier.

The truth was, she missed her father desperately, and she’d give him that precious photograph in a second if it meant he’d never touch another bottle of vodka again.

Her bath was ready.

She added a few drops of lavender oil and slipped beneath the water, letting it quiet her mind and soothe her muscles, still aching from her run. This was the one good thing about the apartment. Though it was lacking in other areas, like basic insulation and structural support, it had come with an improbably-sized bathtub. She’d taken one look and leased it on the spot.

She relaxed back into the tub, gazing up at the crack in the ceiling that looked like Saturn. She’d spent many nights just like this, letting her mind wander as her eyes focused on that one inconsequential thing. It had become a kind of solace. The little apartment had afforded her a bit of space from her father without leaving the town entirely. It had given her just enough room to stay sane — just enough independence to feel like she wasn’t wholly, irrevocably stuck.

She closed her eyes and luxuriated in the water. She wondered if she’d miss it. She wondered if she’d ever find herself wanting to move back.

“You’ve got to work those buns if you want to lose them!”

The trance broke, and her eyes drifted slowly upward to where her neighbor had started his nightly routine of calisthenics and self-loathing. She rolled her eyes and slipped under the water. The instant she submerged, the world vanished, and the noise quieted to a gentle hum. A sense of nostalgia washed over her as she opened her eyes beneath the warm water. There had been many nights when she’d sat just like this, counting the seconds to see how long she could stay under, sometimes wondering what would happen if she decided not to surface.

Those were the earliest days. Things are different now.

It was good that she was leaving. How long had she cocooned herself in this place — this apartment, this town — trapped in some stagnant shrine to the past? Most people would have packed up and moved away years ago. But she’d only lost one parent. She still had a tether.

Come on, you know that’s not the only reason.

The water rippled around her fingers as if on cue, and her pendant drifted up in front of her eyes. It shimmered in the dim light, delicate filigree metal encasing a strangely beautiful opaline stone, hovering in perfect stillness beneath little waves.

No, it wasn’t the only reason. And it wasn’t the only tether. She wasn’t just leaving the town. She was leaving all of it. The road they’d been driving, the cemetery she hated, the falls where she secretly jogged almost every morning to offer her mother a bashful hello. She’d be leaving the story — the idea that everything that happened was real.

I used to call it a memory. When did I start calling it a story?

With a little frown, she reached out in front of her, touching the tips of her fingers to the glinting pendant. How could she leave when she couldn’t even take off the necklace? She could picture it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. The way the angel had reached out his hand to touch the pendant before pulling back and telling her, “Don’t ever take it off.” A surge of anger swept through her. How could she pack up the car when she was still bound to the promise of an angel who didn’t really exist?

Her jaw clenched in determination, and without stopping to think about what she was doing, she reached behind her neck and unclasped the delicate chain. Rather than sinking, the pendant floated strangely away from her, hovering just out of reach.

Suddenly, a crack like thunder snapped across the room, whipping through the air and sucking the color out of everything. She sat up with a jolt. At least she tried, but she couldn’t break through the surface of the water. Bewildered, she put one, then two palms to the surface and encountered a barrier as hard and clear as glass. She made a fist with one hand and banged against it, but it wouldn’t budge, and the sound of her struggle merely echoed back around her.

What the hell?

Again and again, she tried to break through to the surface. Again and again, she was held in place as though by an enormous, warm force.

Is this an earthquake? That must be what this—

Beyond the surface, a black, oil-like ribbon snaked its way to the crack in her ceiling, then spiderwebbed outward, quickly filling up the whole room. She let out a waterlogged shriek, and the lights went dead above her, pitching the cozy room into sudden darkness. The scent of lavender was gone, and the tub itself had chilled to such a degree she thought she must be having a seizure, though her body thrummed with the warmth she could not explain. She clawed at the porcelain edges, trying to hoist herself free.

Except, she couldn’t.

This isn’t an earthquake.

Suddenly, a warm pulse rippled through the room like a wave. It trembled the edges of the bathtub and rattled the sink against the wall. The faster it spread across the length of the ceiling, the faster the shadow retreated back, repelled by the strange, warm energy. Another muffled scream ripped through her lips, emerging only as bubbles as the floor buckled and shook. Her neighbor was still exercising in the apartment above her, seemingly unaware of the deadly struggle going on just beneath. She could hear his feet rhythmically pounding her ceiling. Though it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, she felt herself running out of air.

I have to get out of here. I’m going to drown.

Her head was spinning. Another few seconds, and she was going to black out.

There was a soft nudge against her fingers like a friend tapping for attention. Her eyes flew back to the water, only to see a tiny flicker of gold drifting in the evening light.

She instinctively reached for it and looped the pendant’s chain around her wrist.

At once, the room steadied. At once, that inexplicable pressure disappeared. A second later, she burst through the surface in an explosion of bubbles and spluttering gasps. When she opened her eyes, the world had returned to normal.

The lights flickered another moment, then went steady. Her neighbor’s aerobics music pounded through the ceiling above her, shaking occasional bits of plaster from the walls.

She took a second to catch her breath, then clasped the necklace around her neck and snatched the drain plug out of the water.

No. I’m not going to miss this place at all.

? ? ?

Brie stood, shivering and wrapped in a towel, looking down at her bathtub.

What the hell was that?

Her nurse’s training kicked in, and she patted herself down, checking for injuries. Two fingers on the inside of her wrist told her her heart was racing, but that was to be expected. She wiped off the mirror and checked her pupils. Normal. Frustrated, she resorted to checking the tub itself, running her hands over the inside of the ceramic vessel, looking for what, she couldn’t say.

When she started to shiver so hard her teeth chattered, she gave up and headed to the bedroom. She put on some black yoga pants and a sweatshirt over a strappy bra she had to wrestle to put on. A gift from Sherry. Her wardrobe had long ago fallen victim to her best friend’s sartorial sensibilities. If Brie ever hinted that she wouldn’t mind something a bit more practical, she’d be met with a stunned look and the affirmation that “Beauty is pain, Brianna. Stop acting brand new.” As a result, her closet was better stocked with more fashionable items than she’d ever have chosen if left to her own devices.

She pulled in a faltering breath, trying to shake past whatever had happened in the bath as she packed what remained into boxes, bracing for an emotional response that never came. Perhaps she was merely spent. The seismic shudders in the tub had scared her, and there was only so much someone could give before survival instinct took hold. But if she was honest, she supposed Dr. Rogers was right; her walls were too high and too strong to allow for any true intimacy, even with her own home. She was okay with that. She had her studies, her best friend, and the constant repression of severe trauma to keep her company.

And her plant.

It was a lonely thought — lonely enough that it made her self-conscious, even though she was standing by herself in a now barren living room. The emptiness seemed to close around her, and she suddenly decided she couldn’t stand to be in the place for another second.

She packed the boxes into her trusty silver Suzuki and went back into the apartment for a final look around to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. After a moment of consideration, she doubled back at the last second and wedged the dilapidated Ficus under her arm.

“You know what? I think you’re bouncing back.”