broken like me

Chapter 1

Rhys is twenty-two the first time it happens.

By this point, he'd almost given up on the idea of his having a soulmate—assumed the universe had decided no poor soul deserved to be locked with him for life, and rightly so.

He hisses when he looks up from the mountain of paperwork before him, seeing swaths of red down his arms.

He's been sitting at his desk for hours—there's no way he's managed to spill something.

The stains down his arms would say otherwise.

(Soulmate, his brain whispers.)

But the vast quantities of red—is it blood?Is something wrong with his soulmate?

(What if something happens to them before he ever gets to meet them? He can't do anything to save them.)

(Of course, he would fail his soulmate. Just as he has everyone else he's ever loved.)

His rational brain kicks in, mutters that there's no sign of a wound, and besides that,the color is too light—paint, then?

Whatever the case, he has a soulmate. He fumbles for a pen, gasping for air when he realizes he's been holding his breath and staring at the color.

(Afraid to do anything to disturb it would make it all nothing more than a dream.)

Hello!he writes on his bicep, right above the bright splotches, before he can stop himself.

Rhys waits anxiously, doing nothing but staring at his own handwriting for ten minutes, but no reply.

Maybe they're busy?

An hour later, the red trickles into nothingness as his soulmate washes it away—still no reply.

(They're ignoring him, then.)

It's probably for the best—it was cruel of the universe anyway, to tie an innocent soul to his. No one deserves that.

His soulmate will be better off never knowing him.

(This is all he can find peace in later on, when Amarantha comes by and reminds him exactly what he owes her—exactly what he must continue doing if he doesn't want everyone that works with him to be out of a job and blacklisted to every other law firm in the country.)

/

/

She's sixteen the first time it happens—Mr. Cabrera had let her stay after school and have the art room to herself, to finish up a piece for his class.

(The only one she's passing—but that's not surprising, as being illiterate in makes pretty much everything academic impossible.)

It's his way of telling her happy birthday, she knows; he's the only one to remember the day, and it warms her heart even as she's reminded of how lonely she is in the world.

She doesn't notice when the word appears on her arm, completely lost in her art.

(It's the last time she'll be able to paint for a while; now she's old enough to drop out officially to work full time—as though she hasn't been skipping class four out of five days a week to do so under the table already.)

It's not till she's hastily scrubbing her arms before changing into her work uniform that she sees it—she knows enough to know that it's English, but the only letters she knows are a capital F and A, enough to squiggle out a feigned signature.

More than ever, she wishes she'd learned how to read when she was younger; that when she'd been pulled out of school for "homeschooling" at six it had actually been that, rather than doing everything under the sun for money.