CHAPTER ONE

Before blood and boardrooms, before fangs and contracts, before him—I used to paint.

That’s the first thing I remember when I wake up some mornings, sweating and breathless from dreams that carry the scent of oil paint and wildflowers. Dreams of another life, one I buried with trembling hands and stained brushes. I believed in the way paint could Potray a soul story.

And it did.

It killed my parents.

I was twenty at the time, two weeks from graduating from Hallowind College of Art and Design. My world was color. Canvas. Friends who lived in secondhand clothes and survived on cheap wine and passion. I had a reputation for painting things that didn’t look real—things that felt like dreams. Once, my professor called my work "prophecy." I laughed and said I was just inspired by emotion. But the truth? Half the time I painted things I couldn’t explain. Symbols I never studied. Faces I’d never seen. Landscapes that didn’t exist.

And in my final semester, something... changed.

One night in late spring, I stayed behind in the studio. The campus was silent, and I was alone—the way I liked it. That was when the vision came. Not a thought, not a concept, but something that poured through me like molten gold. My hands moved before my mind caught up. I didn't eat. Didn't blink. I worked until my wrists ached and my eyes burned. The image bloomed like a wound on canvas.

A circle of roses, bleeding.

A silver crown pierced by thorns.

A pair of red, slitted eyes above a mouth full of fangs.

A girl in the center, eyes wide, hands outstretched.

Offering.

I didn't sign that painting with my name.

I signed it with a symbol I’d never used before. A rune I must've seen somewhere in the depths of my soul, etched in instinct. When it dried, I sold it anonymously at the Illumina Exhibit show my college hosted. The buyer paid a ridiculous amount for it. I didn’t ask who they were.

On the day of my graduation, my parents didn’t show up.

They were punctual people. Always early, always dressed to match, always cheering the loudest. When I called my mother’s phone, it rang and rang. No answer. When I called my dad, it went straight to voicemail.

My hands started to shake.

I left the auditorium before they called my name. My heels clicked too loud against marble floors. The sky outside was cloudless, painfully blue. I remember thinking it was too perfect, too calm. I took a cab home, praying they’d be there, smiling and saying it was all a surprise.

They weren’t.

The front door was cracked open.

I knew something was wrong before I stepped inside. The air felt... wrong. Too still. Too cold. My mother’s keys were on the floor beside her purse. One of my father’s shoes had been kicked across the hallway. My chest tightened as I called out.

Nothing.

I found them in the living room. My mother was slumped against the couch, eyes open, mouth parted as if caught in the middle of a whisper. My father was beside her, face down, one hand reaching for the phone that lay just out of reach.

There was no blood. No wounds. No sign of struggle. But they were gone.

Dead.

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FLASHBACK>>>>>>>>>>>>::

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Three years earlier…

"Arabella! You’re going to be late!"

My mother’s voice rang up the stairs like a fire alarm. I startled, nearly knocking over my easel in the process. I had paint on my hands, in my hair, and somehow on my left sock. Again.

“I’m coming!” I called back, even though I was still wearing pajama bottoms and hadn’t packed my sketch portfolio.

I was seventeen. A high school senior. And, at that moment, I was far more concerned with finishing the eyes on the woman in my painting than being on time for calculus.

The painting had started simple—just a face. Soft, unsure. But now it had become something else. Her expression was… wrong. Eyes, too knowing. Lips slightly parted, as if whispering a secret only I could hear. I didn’t remember adding the snake coiled around her wrist. Or the shadowy hand reaching for her shoulder.

But there it was.

“Arabella!” My mom again. Less patient now.

“Okay, okay!”

I wiped my hands on a rag and scrambled into actual clothes. Jeans, oversized sweater, hair in a messy braid. I grabbed my schoolbag, my sketchbook, and the half-dry canvas—tucking it carefully behind my wardrobe before heading downstairs.

Our house was always warm. Not because of the heating, but because of the people in it. My dad was already sitting at the table, reading the paper with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. My mom, graceful and intense, was frying eggs and arguing with Elias, my twelve-year-old brother, who insisted cereal was a full meal.

“Here she is,” my dad said, peering over the top of his mug. “The artist rises.”

“She’s going to miss the bus,” my mom muttered, handing me a plate and pressing a kiss to my forehead in the same breath. “Eat fast.”

“I can eat and run.”

“You better. Your midterms aren’t going to pass themselves.”

Elias threw a piece of toast at me. I caught it.

Our mornings were always like this—loud, loving, slightly chaotic. I didn’t know it then, but they were my favorite kind of moments.

After wolfing down breakfast, I ran out the door, wind biting at my cheeks. The school bus was just pulling up. I slipped into a seat next to Lila, my not-so-secret partner in crime. She was all eyeliner and oversized denim jackets, and today, her nails were painted black with tiny white skulls.

“You look haunted,” she said, tossing me a chocolate bar.

“I painted another weird one last night.”

“Let me guess: shadow eyes? Creepy smile? Ghost hands?”

“Snake and some kind of… rune. I think. Also, her eyes were looking straight at me.”

Lila grinned. “Your brain is a horror movie, and I love it.”

We had art class Second period. I usually tuned out the theory and waited for open studio time. Mr. Fernandez, our teacher, gave up trying to “understand my process” months ago.

“You’re not supposed to feel cursed when you look at a painting,” he once said, frowning at my depiction of a girl trapped in a mirror.

“Why not?” I asked.

He had no answer.

After school, I went to the café, my sanctuary. A tiny place tucked between a florist and a bookstore, owned by an old man named Ezra who wore suspenders and made the best pistachio muffins in the state.

He gave me my usual hot chocolate and waved me toward the window seat.

I pulled out my sketchbook and let my mind go. The café always smelled like cinnamon and something old. Something safe.

Today’s drawing started with a pair of hands. Long fingers. Sharp nails. Then came the roses, thorny and alive. Then the crown. Silver. Broken.

I didn’t stop until the sky outside turned pink.

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I didn’t know it yet, but that year would change everything.

For now, I was just Arabella Vale.

Seventeen.

Painter of strange things.

Girl who dreamed in symbols she didn’t understand.

And, at the time, I thought the strangest thing about my life was the fact that I couldn’t stop painting things that hadn’t happened yet.

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