Page 2 of Broken Fate
Lanna took a breath. There was only one thing to do.
“We’re going to sing, Jada, okay? We’re going to sing a song, you and me,” she said, trying to calm her nerves as she climbed to the edge of the ice.
“We are?”
“Yep, are you ready?”
“What are we singing?” she called.
“Your favorite, okay?”
“Okay …”
“Are you ready?” Lanna asked, taking another step. The ice was thicker closer to shore. Out in the middle of the river, it was thinner, the current keeping it from properly freezing.
“Y-Yes.”
Lanna took a deep breath.
“Curse upon a Calli,”she sang, moving out onto the unstable ice.
“A knife in an alley!”Jada called back, looking up hopefully at her sister.
“Getcha.”
“Getcha.”
Lanna was almost there.
“Don’t look back!”the sisters sang in unison as the ice cracked mightily underneath them, water gushing through the holes.
Lanna reached her sister, grabbed her outstretched hand, and threw her back toward shore as hard as she could.
Jada slid across the ice to safety, getting to her feet.
“I love you, Ja-Ja,” Lanna said as she smiled at her sister, using the nickname only she did.
Then the ice gave way, and she fell through with a sharp cry, the current sweeping her body away underneath the ice.
It was never found.
The Present
I bolted upright in bed as the nightmare ended, drenched in sweat. Both my hair and thin white nightgown were plastered to my skin and soaked through. I thrashed the covers free, trying to catch my breath through the echoes of old pain that I relived with each and every nightmare.
It had been fourteen years since Lanna died. The nightmares had started then, but they’d become more frequent since I turned twenty-one.
Now, as my Fate Night approached, they were getting worse.
Chapter Two
Today was the day I would kill my best friend.
Sort of.
It started like any other. The crow family that lived high up in the boughs of one of thefilmoretrees in our yard started to crow with the rise of the sun. My wolf stirred inside me, nudging me awake, urging me to go out and stretch our legs. To run with the morning breeze that gently bent the long stalks of grass that covered the plains to the east.
It would be warm but not overbearing, she warned, and I tended to agree.
