Entwined With You
Prologue
Once upon a time, I believed in fairytales.
When I was just a little girl, my mother would read to me every night before I fell asleep. Magnificent tales of love and treachery, of dashing princes and beautiful princesses. Of good and evil. And love would always triumph. Always.
In my mind, there was no other way to end a story. Love had to win. Love had to conquer all. Love had to defy its oppressors, or it was not a story worth my time.
One day, I would think to myself, one day, my knight in shining armor will come galloping into my life and sweep me off my feet, and we will fall madly in love.
Just like all the stories my mother would tell me.
All I had to do was wait. I could do that. And while I waited, my mother would tell me more stories. I would curl up next to her, and she would open the storybook with a sort of reverence that made me sit still for once. And when she spoke, she painted pictures in my mind, so vivid, so real, so captivating. Like my own personal movie. It never occurred to me that perhaps, the pictures in my mind were a little too artistic, too movie-like and imaginative for any four year-old to conjure up.
She would close the book with the same reverence as before, looking down at my sleepy form as she gently brushed my hair back from my face, whispering, "My sweet daughter. Angels are watching over you."
I believed angels really were. I was safe. Warm. Loved. In my own special cocooned world where nothing bad or horrible could ever happen, where I was sheltered from the cruelties and injustices and pain.
Reality came bursting onto the pages of my life with harsh brutality on my sixth birthday when I saw my mother killed by a yellow-haired man-boy and a coco-skinned woman with dreadlocks. When I was taken to my aunt's house, my only living relative left, they followed. They burned down the house, and my aunt didn't make it out.
I realized then, that fairytales weren't real. I wouldn't marry a handsome prince. I was not safe. The world was not good and just, a place where love would always win. No one would scale a tower to rescue me.
If I wanted to get out, it was up to me to do it.
I was living a delusion, a dream, and I was just then waking up. It was like a slap in the face. Like a bucket of ice cold water was thrown over me.
I ran away, before I could be taken to a foster family. And they followed still. They needed to kill me too, because I'd seen them. I could identify them. And when they did catch up to me, cornering me in an alley, I was sure that was it.
I waited for the death blow. But it never came. Instead, a man saved me. A man with cold, hard eyes and a detached air about him. Quinn. He offered to change my life. To teach me to fight. To teach me to kill. I accepted.
And I knew what I had to do.
If I was going to survive, I had to make myself strong. I couldn't trust anyone else to look after me, I couldn't rely on them. Nobody could protect me. Not even my mother had been able to do that.
I had to protect myself.
Once upon a time, I believed in fairytales.
But once upon a time, I also had a mother.
So, what did you think?
Interested?
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