Shattered Minds

Prologue

PROLOGUE

THORNHAVEN ORPHANAGE - TEN YEARS AGO

ASHER - AGE 18

The flames eat through the east wing like they’ve been starving for years. Like they know our pain, our suffering.

Black smoke curls under the doors, heavy and choking. Screams echo down the halls—thin, frantic, some too small to belong to anything human. It’s the kind of sound you only make when the world forgets you exist.

Good.

Let it all burn.

I wait in the corridor where the light doesn’t reach, the shadows thick with ash and memory. My heart pounds, not with fear, but hunger. I’ve wanted this. Dreamed it.

And she’s late.

My little shadow.

When she finally appears, her nightgown is soaked in blood that isn’t hers. Barefoot. Eyes blown wide. I don’t know if she ran or killed her way out, but I don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. I just hold out my hand.

She takes it.

No hesitation. No fear.

Just my other half, stepping into the fire with me.

And everything else fades.

Maybe this is what love looks like when you’ve been made wrong.