Page 1 of Once Upon a Fable
PROLOGUE
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THE DAY I WAS BORN, a curse was put upon me.
That curse grew with me from boyhood to man. I had no mark to prove it. No doctor to confirm it.
But I knew.
A blackness had attached itself to me, and I was cursed.
It was irrefutable.
Because of this fact, I didn’t look upon surprises as favorable. Surprises in my world meant pain and punishment. I liked methods. Rules. Comfortable habits and familiar routines.
So, what are you going to do with her?
My hands balled as I paced outside the cell where I’d thrown her.
I don’t know.
That was a lie.
I knew what I should do.
I should kill her because she’d found me. She’d stumbled upon my carefully hidden world. She’d had the audacity to enter my home. To step foot upon my domain.
So...kill her.
I stopped.
I glared at the heavy wooden door, dropping my gaze to the rusty padlock that’d continued its role of imprisonment for far too long.
Eleven years.
Eleven years since I’d looked upon another person. Eleven years since I’d felt that raw hate bubble in my blood, demanding violence, chantingfor their pain before they could summon mine.
Do it.
I pulled the key from my pocket.
I opened the door.
I stepped inside to face my enemy.
CHAPTER ONE
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MY MOTHER USED TO SAY I was blessed.
Her tone might have been sarcastic, and her praises might have been fake, but that didn’t change the fact that I agreed with her.
Iwasblessed.
I was born in the summer, I liked to learn, and I’d had a happy childhood. Well, I had until my dad passed away from a sudden stroke, leaving me and my little brother, Joshua, at the mercy of my fragile mother, who used scorn to patch up her own heavy grief.
But, because I was blessed, the minute Joshua turned eighteen and rented a place with some friends, I moved out of the house too, assuring my mother that I would always be there for her. That I would always answer the phone and forever be her daughter, even if she couldn’t understand why life seemed, in her words, “to favor me and not her.”
