The Fates Between Us (The What Lies Between Duet #1)

Prologue

Fallyn

In every nightmare, his face remains ensconced in shadow. As his knife skewers me. As his hands wrap my throat and wring the life from me. As my head is cleaved from my shoulders.

It’s always the same male. I always see up to his chin, even through the pain, even through the familiar bite of fear.

I don’t see the color or length of his hair, the tint of his eyes, the shape of his face.

He’s always concealed in all black, much like his surroundings.

He’s entirely anonymous, and that fear infiltrates every aspect of my waking reality.

It leaves my eyes searching, forever roaming every face.

Every unexpected movement sends my hand flashing to my blade.

Every unfriendly eye a cause for concern. A cause to run.

He never speaks. In every single encounter in my mind with this male, he’s never told me why he kills me over and over.

Every night, I meet a different end. I’ve asked him why.

I’ve begged him to find another victim to torture.

His answer always remains the same; it's in the unnerving silence between the chase and the drawing of his blade, his answer is never with words, but written in my blood.

As a child, I hated falling asleep. My mother and father would wake with me, rocking me back to sleep through the fear.

I would wake, searching for the wounds of which I still felt the blaring sting, several times searching for the gods I was supposed to have joined.

And now, even as an adult, I have a hard time sleeping alone in the wake of the fear.

I often read, train, garden, anything to avoid sleep’s grasp for as long as possible.

But it would always claim me nonetheless, and I fear it would pale in comparison to him actually finding me. . I just had to be ready to face my fate—or to change it.

I could only pray it was possible. That my dreams were a warning, a practice run, and not a premonition. I prayed to every god and goddess I knew of that he wouldn’t, but with each passing day, I suspected all they did was laugh.

Fuck all the gods.

The thing about a death sentence is that everyone thinks it’s a big, showy thing with a guillotine, the end of a rope, or an axe.

Everyone thinks it’s a grandstand where you state your last words before someone important who isn’t paying attention.

Perhaps there’s a crowd, screaming in support of your death or of your transgressions.

This wasn’t that.

But it was a death sentence all the same.

It was high noon when my betrothal announcement was made, against my wishes, and I glared at the gods—the old ones and the new bastard—in the sky in resentment.

The Prince of Inithilia should be a catch, but I wanted him as much as a knife in the gullet.

His cruelty took a seat front and center when the kingdom was forced by the whims of the King to forsake the old gods—Zeus, Hades, Athena, and the others—in favor of the new god, the Morningstar.

The new god’s concept of the seven sins—or was it eight?

—would dictate and control our lives and our afterlives.

At least the old gods interacted with us from time to time, for good or ill.

The Morningstar didn’t even confirm his presence to us except through the royal family, to demand we pray—or perish in penance.

We either convert to worship the one new god, or we die in the name of the old ones. Places of worship for each of the old gods were to be destroyed, replaced by temples to the new one. The one true god, the royal family had decreed. And all shall follow. None shall falter.

Steadfast may you be, the newly devout would say. The words crept down my spine with cold fingers, somehow feeling like a warning, but nobody could ever give name to the danger that felt ever present these days.

My marriage to the prince itself wouldn’t be my death.

But hiding my disdain for the gods, all of them, most likely would be a matter of life and death.

Hiding my disdain for the royal family would be even more treacherous.

The thought of my wedding night, of roaming fingers and hungry gazes had me grinding my teeth and shivering in the temperate air.

You can believe in the old gods existence, but you don’t have to believe in them.

Belief and worship are different things.

Yet, King Kodak, third of his name, Monarch of Steel and Shadows, King of all Mundane and Arcane, believed he could force an entire kingdom to worship his god of choice—as well as himself.

And I was set to marry his son in three months’ time.

How I caught his notice from Este Valnor, I couldn’t possibly fathom.

I’d met the man once in passing when I accompanied my father to the city.

Met was a strong word. Bowed once as he walked by was more accurate.

How I’d ensnared his notice or his son’s, or when, was far beyond me.

I felt as though I stood atop the fiery mountains to the south and someone was about to push me to my execution, from which there could be no escape.

“Fuck all the gods,” I whispered as the night closed in around me. “The old and the new. I have no use for any of you.”

There was, of course, no response at all.