Page 1 of Fractured Fates

PROLOGUE

Rhi

10 yearsago

“Wake up.”

I open my eyes.

My bedroom is dark, pitch black. It’s the middle of the night.

My eyes drift shut.

“Rhianna, wake up, come on, honey.”

A cool hand grips my shoulder. It shakes me gently.

I open my eyes again.

A dark figure hovers above me. I squint, features gradually emerging from the gloom.

My aunt, her long blonde hair loose about her shoulders, her face tense.

“Rhi, we have to go. Someone’s coming, honey.”

I’m awake. My small body already shaking, my heart thumping against my ribs.

I roll up to sit and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The cold air nips at my bare feet as my aunt sweeps me up into her arms.

“You remember what we practiced?” she whispers into my ear as she wraps a woolen cardigan around my tiny shoulders. She’s trembling, although her tone is bright.

“Y-y-yes,” I say, letting her thread my arm through a sleeve. “Run to the forest and hide in the trees.”

My aunt shakes her head. “Not this time, honey. There isn’t time.”

Immediately, my head snaps to the dark window. In the distance, I hear the roar of engines, lights swinging through the trees.

“It’s like my dream,” I say.

“Yes, honey,” my aunt says, taking my hand and hurrying me out of the bedroom and down the wooden stairs. Her pace is fast, and my feet slip on the steps, but she yanks me upright, tugging me through into the kitchen.

Here she fetches the silver dagger from the shelf above the fireplace before opening the larder door.

She pushes the stacks of boxes to one side, making space for me.

“Who are they?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Magicals?”

In my dream, they were faceless men, angry and violent. I couldn’t make out their eyes or their mouths, their noses or their brows. I never can. There’s only ever been one face I could and that, my aunt says, is because his face is everywhere. The authorities’ enforcer. It’s not him tonight though, not him we’re hiding from this time.

My aunt motions to the space she’s created and I shake my head, clinging to the fabric of her thin nightgown.

“I don’t want to,” I say, a sob bubbling in my stomach, my body shaking uncontrollably now.

My aunt strokes back tangled locks of my dark hair, holding my face in her hands and kissing my cheeks and my forehead.

“I know, honey, I know you don’t. But it won’t be for long. It won’t be for long and then we’ll be safe again.”

A noise, half hiccup, half sob, breaks free from my throat. The sound of the engines grows fiercer, echoing among the trees.