PROLOGUE

I CAN SEE threads.

Not the thread that one used to sew and mend up things. Not the threads that the spider produces to be able to catch their prey.

I wish that my vision is that simple.

I can see the threads that contain a person’s past and future.

It is a curse that stayed within our family. The Sinclair family kept the well-sought bloodline by marrying the last maiden that possessed the peculiar ability way back in the 13th century, thus continuing the bloodline of female thread readers.

The Sinclairs were doomed to produce males since then. The Sinclair family ruled out that it is probably a product of their foreign blood mixing into the thread readers’ bloodline. Some of their great-grandparents theorized that maybe the power and responsibility are not yet ready for the greed of mankind. Or, maybe, their bloodline was just so unlucky to not have produced firstborn females, since thread-reading is always inherited by the firstborn females of every generation of the tribe.

Unfortunately, I am a first-born Sinclair. A female to boot. The very first in our bloodline after so many centuries.

My family rejoiced at my birth since my existence proved the myth of our family bloodline. It also meant that my family could someday rise from poverty and use me for their gain. Politics, maybe? Thievery? I don’t know. The possibilities are limitless.

But I never wanted any of those.

I’m tired of running away if someone cared to ask. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder at all times. I’m so tired of using my powers for my parents’ insatiable greed. I am so tired of being used.

What was it like to view the world without the glistening threads of fate? What was it like to be completely clueless and ignorant of someone’s upcoming death? Because I had to look the other way every time I see a healthy person with a black thread—the color that signifies death— dangling at their back. What was it like to not know about someone’s past or someone’s future and live like an ordinary person?

I wouldn’t know.

Because someone with this kind of ability shouldered the heavy burden that comes with it. And what’s worse is that I have to keep myself from interfering with the threads of fate, or I’ll suffer its ugly consequences.

I regretted doing it once. I should avoid repeating the same mistake. Except I did.