Fated

By Ella A. Smyt

Being able to see is a gift most people have, but nobody is really watching. People guess how their lives are going to turn out, but nobody really knows what they are destined to do or who they are destined to be with.

For Indigo Preston, being a seer is more blinding than helpful. She can see people's soulmates, their partners, their best friends, and most reviled of all, their murderers. That ability used to mean nothing to her until she met Celeste and Saxon. While Celeste's life is thrown into danger and Saxon's world comes to a grinding halt, Indigo must navigate a sticky web of future in which the three Fates have entwined her in.

Fate can't be rewritten, but it can be destroyed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662483943

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Fated

Ella A. Smyt

Copyright © 2022 Ella A. Smyt

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 979-8-88793-934-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8393-6 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8394-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

About the Author

To my mom, who never stopped pushing me no matter how stubborn I was.

Prologue

Everyone is born with a gift, but I didn't use mine wisely. We all want to believe we have control of our own destiny, but I can assure you that we don't. A string seer gets their powers at birth, and some have more power than others. What they choose to do with these powers all depends. I chose to be self-righteous and entitled in thinking that I could alter the mandate of fate.

My type of seer is pretty rare. We've been around for centuries, but not as long as the Fates. The Fates love to say that what has been written cannot be undone unless chaos descends upon order. But what's wrong with chaos? In chaos, we find our version of the truth. My truth is completely different from everyone else's because I see too much. The Fates know it all, but so do I. A string seer and the Fates almost never cross paths. Only a few seers have the tenacity and power to hear their call. We're both chained to the order of nature. They weave destiny, and I interpret how it will play out.

A person can have up to five strings on their left hand. Each string has its own purpose and is connected to another person, binding their destinies. The black string is the most misleading; it's on the pointer finger and represents death. A white string on the pinky extends to the person you will have children with. Depending on the proximity of the person, the intensity of the string will change. Black and white, however, never change.

The most uncommon is the blue string. Tied at the thumb, it indicates a unique and outlasting friendship. Marriage or divorce is signified by a green string that appears on the middle finger. Beyond a doubt, our most desired connection is a soulmate. The idea of a destined partner comes way before our time and is symbolized by a red string on the ring finger.

I staggered out through the woods, tripping on gnarled branches and clutching my stomach. My hair was sticking to my forehead, and there was blood on me. I had lost any sense of purpose and direction. Adrenaline was pumping through me as I tried to regain my strength. I should have known better than to get involved. I should have never let her approach me. I should have never let her in. Now she was going to die, and it's all my fault.

Chapter 1

I was alone today, just like I was every other day; but today, the loneliness hung a little heavier on me. Ten years will do that to a person. I gently placed the lilies on the hard stone beneath me and stood there silently. I didn't know how long I was supposed to stand there. I was like a wind-up toy that had lost its charge, just waiting for the next person to start me. I took a hard look at the stone and where there should have been sadness or anger, I felt…strange.

A crack of lightning boomed in the background, and I looked up at the sky with a conspiratorial smile, just daring it to piss rain all over my umbrella-less existence.

White lilies for white strings, right, Mom? I said with a sad grin. The grave stared back at me mutely. Okay, tough crowd, I said, trying again with the grave. A moment passed. Well, you know I was never really good at making jokes. I sighed, wondering why I had decided to randomly try stand-up at my mother's grave. She was a jokester, but she never really joked about the strings. I guess I didn't either.

What was there to say about the strings? They controlled our lives, seemingly more than the lives of the people around us, which I always felt was ironic.

Let's see, I said, counting the appropriate fingers cartoonishly. One for marriage, one for friendship, one for soulmates, one for babies, oh and my favorite, the most useless one, one for death. I gave the grave another sad smile. Isn't that one the best? Death happens all around us, and yet these people get a special one that only appears if there's been a familiar bond ‘already in place', I said with a singsongy trill. "It's not even fate. It is literally almost impossible to have one, so what's the point?

I mean, how useless is that? Did it help you? Does it help any of us? I hadn't realized I was shouting until I saw a flock of birds that were nearby fly away.

I trained my eyes back on the grave. I really never knew what to do when I visited, except shove my emotions down. There was something peaceful about graveyards, not a string in sight. I drunk in the clarity and went about saying goodbye to my mother. I said a silent prayer for my mom, even though I had no one to pray to, and made my way back to my dorm. Really, I shouldn't be out alone at night, but it wasn't technically night yet. It was dusk. The orange that lit up the night sky was my favorite.

I finally got to my hall in the University of Nevada. There were more people out than usual, and it looked like a naughty cat had gotten into grandma's yarn supplies. Red strings, green strings, blue strings—Red fish, blue fish, I said out loud, interrupting my train of thought and making myself smile for the first time that day.

I squinted my eyes a tad as a girl from one of my psych classes passed and waved her green and white strings, practically burning my retinas as they moved with her fingers. See, the stupid strings wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't glow. I mean, really, what was the point of the color intensities to me? So what if a random person's soulmate is near, whoopee. I know I was coming off a bit nihilistic, but being a seer is like grief. You go through the stages, and then finally, the sweet release of acceptance. Except, mine never came. I just switched it for eternal numbness.

I finally made it back to my dorm and shut the door and flopped on the bed. This was another little slice of clarity for my vision. The stings are weird like that. I can see where they extend out and the intensity, but I can't see them at all unless I'm in the vicinity of people. Like if I left my door open and saw a girl with a red string walk past it, if her soulmate was past my wall, I would see the string extend out past the wall, but since my door is closed, I can't see her or her lousy strings. As you can imagine, this type of sensory overload has made me into quite the introvert…or lonely hermit if you will.

I had come here to get out of my shell, or more like I was pushed here by my dad. He always went on and on about college being a great place to meet people, and that's where he met my mother, and yada yada yada. I believed him; of course, he wasn't bogged down by basically being a human find my iPhone. But as a favor to him for getting me through my teenage years alone, I agreed to move to the dorms even though he lived forty-five minutes away.

I sighed. Those were tough years; once my mom died when I was twelve years old, my happiness went with her. I turned to my side and looked at the picture of us on my desk. We were wearing Mickey mouse ears and sharing a chocolate ice-cream cone at Disney. Our faces were messy, but you could see the happiness in our eyes. My dad always loved that picture. I did too. Pictures were also a great relief for my vision. It was his favorite picture that he took of us. That was the last picture that we had together, and that was the last time I was happy.

Tears stung at the edges of my eyes, and I cursed myself for getting emotional. Something told me that holding them back would do more harm than good, and the thought made my heart ache harder. Cold pain radiated from me, traveling through my veins, all the way down to my fingertips. There were tears streaming down my face and in my ears, mucus dripping down my throat, and I felt like I was drowning.

I got up abruptly, grabbed my jacket, and sped out the door. I didn't know where I was going, but I let my legs carry me wherever they wanted to go. It was Reno, and there were plenty of places to go. Of course, I ended up in the place most people go in Reno, downtown. It was across the freeway from campus. Most kids went there to blow off steam. I never went, couldn't stand the sight off all those stings. I didn't have any friends anyway, and I didn't want them. I knew too much.

I ended up at Circus Circus. Why I chose that location was beyond me. Maybe for the bar, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a bar without a casino attached to it. Circus Circus was huge. It almost looked like a piece of colorful ice that had become a building. At night, the colored lights were blinding. I wished they would blind me. The smell of the McDonalds wafted across the street and made my stomach growl. I realized I hadn't eaten all day, but it didn't matter. Soon, I would have alcohol to fill my stomach. I walked in, and true to its name, it looked like a circus. There were multicolored lights shining on everything, and the sticky smell of sugar was in the air. Everything seemed so cheery, and all I wanted was to unplug all the lights. I walked up to the first bar I could find and ordered a Moscow mule. It was slightly sweet and very strong. I gulped half of it in one go as the vodka burned my throat and made me cough. I was never a really big drinker. I sat there, staring at my drink as the low rumble and tinkling of coins in the slot machine lulled me. Ten years had passed, and I was more alone than ever. I polished off my drink and went to order another. The bartenders had switched, and the new one eyed me strangely. I was twenty-one, but I looked young. I had long black hair, bright green eyes, and an olive complexion. I will admit I was striking if I really tried, but I hadn't tried to be beautiful in a while. No point in drawing attention to myself when I wanted to be invisible. I sighed. That thought made me feel strange. Choosing not to analyze it, I ordered another Moscow mule and two more shots of vodka to go with it.

I was knocking back my second shot when this pretty little thing came up and shouted that she wanted another Cosmo. She looked a little younger than me, but the bartender happily obliged. I rolled my eyes, of course. She was about five feet five inches and thin but had some proportionate curves. She had thick blonde hair, with light pink color dipped at the ends. She had her hair in a bouncy ponytail and was wearing a black tube top—slightly ripped—low-waisted skinny jeans, and purple converse. She was dressed casually, but on her, it looked more than that. I'll admit if I cared a lick about appearance, I'd be jealous of her.

I sat my shot glass down and stared at the crowd, then instantly regretted it as the lights, strings, and alcohol started to make my head pound. She turned and looked at me. She had startlingly blue eyes. She gave me a smile. My instant reaction was to look down at her strings, but I willed myself to maintain eye contact instead. I nodded in her general direction and went back to giving myself a migraine by surveying the crowd.

Oh my gosh, the bar by the arcade was so crowded! she said. I finally gave into temptation and looked down at her hands and noticed a red string on her ring finger. That wasn't surprising. She was beautiful and seemed outgoing. Her soulmate must be the same. She also had a white string on her pinky, so she was going to have kids. That also made sense, given her looks. The blue string on her thumb was pointed all the way across the room. Based on the intensity of the color of the string, I assumed her best friend was probably trying to order a drink at the other bar. Pretty typical strings for a pretty person with a happy life. The thought twisted something peculiar in my gut. I nodded in understanding and started to sip my drink. I was starting to feel a little woozy.

I'm Celeste! I go to the U of N. You know, the one across the street? Do you go there? If you do, we should totally hang out!

I wondered if she was already drunk. Yeah, I go there too.

Oh my gosh, that's so great! You live on campus? I'm at Nye Hall! What's your major? she squealed.

This was way more energy than I was expecting. But she probably had nothing to be bitter about. I wondered what she was doing on this side of the casino alone. All the arcade and carnival games were on the other side.

Uh, psychology.

Oh, wow. You know, for someone who studies psych, you're not very talkative. I'm a chemistry major! she paused. I know what you're thinking. Me? A chemist? But I love it. Something so small and almost invisible can make such an impact.

Tell me about it. I took another sip of my drink. I knew I shouldn't bother making small talk with this girl. I was never going to let her in, and she clearly had everything she needed, judging by her left hand, but I was feeling way too lucid to care. I'd probably never see her again, and she probably had a huge group of friends, so what did it really matter?

Where are your friends? Doesn't seem like you'd be here alone, I said, slightly slurring my words, looking across the casino. I was not used to getting drunk, especially in public.