All Chapters of The Mountain's Promise: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Lorna Pennick was not finished. "Don't worry. We're family, so Mom, Dad, and I will always do right by you."I murmured a reply, but I did not believe a word of it.When I was eight years old, a fortune teller said that if I married before my older brother, he would grow old alone. Ever since then, my parents and Lorna had acted like they had lost their minds.They would not let me go out with friends. They took away my phone and deleted every girl from my contacts.In high school, I once asked the girl at the top of our class for help with a single homework problem. The next day, my parents and Lorna stormed into the school and screamed at me in front of the entire class, calling me shameless and saying I was already trying to seduce girls when I was still just a kid. No matter how the yelling went, it always ended with the same line. "We're family. Listen to us, and we'll always do right by you."Yet I had never once seen them do right by me.The car bounced along the mount

Maisie had also assumed all along that the person she was getting engaged to would be Arlo.Clenching my jaw, I threw every gift Maisie had given me over our three years together into the trash, from the clothes to the stuffed animals to the cologne.Mom walked in, ignored my red-rimmed eyes, and took Grandma's pearl necklace from my drawer.I stood up to stop her. "That's mine! Grandma left it to me!""Yours, his, what's the difference?" Mom frowned. "Arlo needs it for the wedding. He's your own brother. Family doesn't keep track of what belongs to who."Family did not keep track. I almost laughed.Whenever Arlo used my things, nobody kept track of anything. Yet whenever I touched anything of his, even something as small as a pen, I got a finger jabbed in my face and an earful.In the end, it only ever meant everyone helping Arlo take what was mine, until nothing in this house truly belonged to me. Even this room was not safe. They wanted to take it for him too.Mom had barely

It was always 'someday' with them.I looked at them one by one. Every single one of them was helping Arlo take what was mine.I had bought this suit with my own money. It was meant to be the most dignified way I could say goodbye to my life as a human being, and they wanted to take even that.Seeing that I had no intention of backing down, my parents and Lorna grew grimmer by the second.Arlo quickly stepped in. "Mom, Dad, Lorna, don't you still need to go talk to the photographer? Go ahead. I'll have a word with Jude alone."Mom did not look convinced. "But what if he..."Arlo smiled. "It's fine. We're brothers, so it'll be easier for us to talk."They hesitated for a moment but eventually left.It was just Arlo and me now.The smile slowly faded from his face, and I suddenly had a very bad feeling.Sure enough, Arlo stepped up to me and pulled out his phone. He opened a video and held it up in front of my face.It was footage from that night in the mountains. Four or five

Lorna suddenly remembered that night. After she had left me on Greymantle Mountain, I had called her in tears and told her I had run into some men who were about to beat me up.What had she said to me then?Right. She had said, "You can play the victim all you want. I'm not coming to get you!"Those men had been real. Someone really had beaten me.Yet she had assumed I was lying and putting on a pathetic act so I could come home and ruin Arlo's engagement. She had even hung up on me without a second thought.She could only imagine how desperate I must have felt.Lorna crouched on the floor, overcome with anguish.What had she done?…The old shrine on Greymantle Mountain had been abandoned for years. The courtyard was overgrown with weeds as tall as my waist, and most of the gold paint had flaked off the statue inside, exposing the dull gray clay underneath.I walked in and stopped in front of the statue.The setting sun streamed in through a broken window and scattered patc

"Is that what you call doing what's best for me?"Mom's crying stopped abruptly, and panic flashed across her face.Dad lost his patience. He pointed at Morwen and turned to Lorna. "What are you standing around for? Get rid of this woman! Bring Jude home! I refuse to believe all of us can't handle one random woman!"Lorna gritted her teeth and charged forward, ready to drag me out by force.Morwen raised her hand slightly, and an invisible force hurled Lorna backward. She slammed hard onto the stone steps at the shrine's entrance and coughed up blood."Lorna!" Arlo cried out and ran to her.My parents panicked and rushed over to help her up.Dad stared at Morwen in horror. "What are you?"Morwen did not answer. She only looked down at me and reached out to smooth my windblown hair."It's okay now," she said softly.As I looked at her, my eyes suddenly stung.In over 20 years, she was the first person who had ever stood in front of me and told me it was okay.Something seeme