Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales (The Fatesworn Saga #1)
Prologue
“Misfortune and Promise are bound as one, sealed in blood, fire, and stardust,” the Fate whispered to herself, her nails scraping across the stone walls of her mind. “Much as Prophecy and Demise dance along a spectrum. Isn’t it a beautiful thing how two can be spun to reflect one another?”
She hummed as she wove circles around her cage, bare feet cool in the moonlight glimmering through the singular broken panel in the stained-glass dome high above.
The shards had long since sliced her skin, their memories turned to dust. Nothing but ashy remnants stuck to the hardened soles of her feet, taunting her.
“We are all born along that spectrum, though. Every fortune bows to it. How complex feeble minds become when they believe themselves in control of the bonds tying their futures.” Her melody continued, curling around the stone.
“Neither good nor bad, neither sweet nor malicious, as the Fates have decreed in all the years we’ve hung in the sky. ”
Another step on her toes. Another scratch of cracked nails on stone.
“And isn’t it lovely that two can mirror each other so wholly, complete the ring left unwed?
” She paused, tilting her head. “Or is it tragic, because the lengths are stretched once that half is reached? Tragedy and beauty often go hand in hand, such as Prophecy and Demise…Cruelty and Adoration…Reign and Ruin…”
Her heart splintered in her chest, a damning pinch that had echoed for so many millennia, she barely noticed it now. A thorn beneath her skin that had grown through the poisonous and alluring petals, peeling around her heart in this rotten cage that kept her from the world.
Or saved the world from her.
Her humming mounted, a tune laced with starlight and fatale. With calamity and charm. A shift danced beyond the realm of her reach. It tingled along her skin as she sang,
“A fortune spun by Fated hands,
A choice taken from forsaken bands.
Two hearts staked through with malice,
A sacrifice proclaimed by the Balance.
And now for all revenge rejoice,
Prophecy dictates a promised choice.
For Him to fall, and Her to bleed,
A future that we all must heed.
Give one heart of greed entrenched in kin,
And many dancing with sweet sin,
To remedy a past scorned daring,
And cross with bloodied footsteps faring.
Until Fates become of mercy,
Their choices dictating who Reigns worthy.
And somewhere beyond the veil
Spins an utter star-crossed tale,
To tempt—”
A gentle gasp slipped from her lonely lips as blood dripped from her cracked nails.
“Someone is coming,” she whispered again—to only herself. For no one in this place would ever hear her. “He comes for me.” A tragic grin up through the cracked dome, starlight spilling over her pale features, eyes glowing silver. “And madness descends.”