Seeking Fate (Fated)

by Brenda Drake

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more of Entangled Teen Crush’s books… The Big Bad Wolf

  Lions and Tigers and Boys

  Love Me, Love Me Not

  Jane Unwrapped

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Brenda Drake. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 105, PMB 159

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  rights@entangledpublishing.com

  Crave is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Candace Havens

  Cover design by Syd Gill

  Cover photography by Vasko/iStock

  ISBN 978-1-64063-627-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition September 2018

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  For all the best friends,

  And to Joannine, who’s been mine since we were thirteen

  Chapter One

  Daisy

  Daisy Layne focused on saving a life. It wasn’t easy since her own might be in danger. The plane dropped quickly, along with her stomach, and then leveled out again. She waited several minutes, making sure the turbulence was over, then returned to skimming the pages and pages of notes she’d written in the notebook opened on the tray table in front of her.

  The rest of the passengers were either asleep or on electronic devices. The tiny lamp above Daisy’s head was the only one on, which was like being in a spotlight. Daisy adjusted on the cushion and glanced across the aisle at the row of seats across from her. Three older women, maybe in their sixties, watched movies playing on the screens embedded in the back of the chairs in front of them.

  No one was watching her, but that didn’t stop her from feeling self-conscious. She slid down a little bit more in her chair, hoping the seatbacks would shield her from any unwanted attention.

  Her sister Iris was seated beside Daisy and hadn’t stirred in hours. Eyes hidden behind a sleep mask with half a fox’s face on it, mouth wide open, her breathing heavy.

  The plane jumped again, jostling Iris awake. She lifted a corner of her mask and fixed one blue eye on Daisy. “You should try to sleep,” she whispered, which was really more of a hiss. “The jet lag will knock you on your ass.”

  “I can’t,” Daisy said. Another bounce shimmied her notebook across the table, and she slapped her hand down stopping it from falling off. “What if I’m missing something?”

  “Oh please.” Iris let go of the mask, concealing her eye again. “You’ve researched for two years. Gone over it a hundred times.”

  “I could be wrong.” Daisy bit the end of her pen. “And it could be too late.”

  It was hard to believe it had been two years since a spirit named Crina had possessed Iris. Daisy was the one who’d gotten rid of Crina. She and her older sister Aster both had the power to change anyone’s fate with a touch of a tarot card.

  But with that power came consequences. Dangerous ones for anyone the fate changer touched after performing the magic. And apparently, it also gave Daisy the ability to use the cards to send menacing little poltergeists, like Crina, on their way to the hereafter.

  Before Crina had departed for the spirit world, or wherever ghosts went after an exorcism, she’d begged Daisy to save the last Van Buren heir cursed to die on his eighteenth birthday. Whoever the boy was, he was doomed just as Reese, a.k.a. Aster’s fiancé, had been before her sister saved him by changing his fate. Daisy had promised Crina that she would find whoever it was and remove the spell.

  Daisy never told anyone, but she had a recurring dream of a boy in a garden with a castle looming in the background. A rosebush between them, face obscured by thorny stems, his intense blue eyes pleaded for her help, and she desperately wanted to get to him. He felt real. She was certain he was the boy she had to find, and that their lives were connected.

  Having the gift to change fates was a burden. Sure, she could save people, but it was at a price and mistakes were inevitable. Her sisters weren’t aware of what the doctor had told Daisy and her mom eighteen months ago, or they wouldn’t have helped her. Daisy’s heart was weak. Changing fates was taking its toll on her body. She had wanted to take the trip to find the heir for over a year, but her mom had said she was too frail and young to go alone.

  If her mom discovered what Daisy was up to, she’d ground her for life. But Daisy was determined to find the boy with the intense blue eyes. Determined to save him before his time was up. Before her time was up, since they were connected. Her mother would freak if she found out what Daisy had learned when she released Crina from the land of the living. The curse went from Crina to Daisy, tethering Daisy to the last heir. His fate was her fate. They’d die together.

  She could feel the curse, crushing her lungs at times, squeezing her heart until it hurt. Teasing her with the touches of death. She wondered if the boy felt the same things as she had. Felt the grains of sand slipping through the hourglass of life.

  Or did he just brush it off as being tired or sick, not knowing his fate?

  Sweat beaded on her forehead and she tried to push the thought to the back of her mind. It wouldn’t do her or the boy any good to let her fear break her.

  Stay strong. You can do this. It’ll be okay.

  But she was afraid, and the questions in her head just made that fear sink in deeper. What would happen if she didn’t find the Van Buren heir? Would death come fast? Or slow? Would it be painful?

  “Did you zone out again?” Iris slipped the mask up to her forehead and straightened in her seat. “That boy. Miri’s nephew. Andrew…?”

  She’d grown close to Miri, the local fortune-teller on the Ocean City Boardwalk. The older woman had mentored and helped Daisy master her gift of changing fates with her tarot cards.

  “It’s Andrei,” Daisy corrected her. “Andrei Vasile.”

  Miri had convinced Andrei to help Daisy search for the cursed heir since he lived in Amsterdam and the Van Buren family were some sort of royals there. They would Skype each other without the video on because Andrei hated being on cameras. He hadn’t even kept his social media accounts up to date. The photos he’d posted were old. In them, he was skinny with wild hair and a pimply face.

  Iris tugged her water bottle out from the back pocket of the seat in f
ront of her. “You’re positive he’s meeting us at the airport, right?”

  She frowned. “We’ve been planning it ever since Miri connected us on Snapchat. Every step. Do we need to go over it again?”

  “No, but if Miri’s nephew is anything like her, he’ll be late.” She unscrewed the bottle and just as she was about to take a sip, another jolt of turbulence hit. Water sloshed out of the lip and drenched her chin and T-shirt. “Damn it.”

  Daisy pressed her lips together, suppressing a laugh.

  “Not funny.” She smirked and dabbed her face and neck with the corner of the too-thin-to-give-any-warmth airplane blanket.

  “I hope he isn’t late,” Daisy said, removing the printout of the schedule Andrei had sent her from her notebook and looking it over. “We don’t have a lot of leeway between train connections. Twelve days isn’t that much time to cross Europe and back.”

  Iris shook her shirt, trying to dry it. “Well, it better be enough time, since that’s all we have before Aster’s wedding. If we’re not at the Van Burens’ when the others arrive, Mom will kill us.”

  “I can’t believe she’s getting married,” Daisy said. “She’s twenty-two. It’s too young. I don’t see what the rush is.”

  “She’s in love.” Iris swooned, shifting in her seat.

  Daisy rolled her eyes. All of her sisters were in relationships, and it was annoying. Though Daisy liked Reese, Wade, and Dena, she wasn’t too pleased that her sisters were so wrapped up in them. Having Iris all to herself for once was nice. Even though, whenever wifi was available, she had to FaceTime Wade.

  Iris put her mask back on. “Well, I’m going to sleep. If you’re smart, you will, too.”

  Daisy put the schedule away and stretched up to turn off the light. Leaning back, she pulled the flimsy blanket up to her chin, her hand lightly brushing Iris’s skin.

  Iris quickly pulled her arm away.

  Really? She’s still scared of me. After three years? Daisy was young when it had happened, didn’t even know how to control her gift. She was playing with her tarot cards and she accidentally changed a friend’s fate. It was a reversed Chariot card, indicating her friend would be in an accident. After she’d flipped it, Daisy touched Dena, her sister Violet’s girlfriend, passing the bad fate to her. The crash was horrific. Dena barely made it out alive. Ever since, her family feared her.

  “Relax,” Daisy said, annoyed and hurt enough to lie. “You’re safe. I haven’t changed anyone’s fate.”

  Recently.

  Iris didn’t need to know that Daisy had changed fates. It started as practice. A way to figure out how to control her gift. If she didn’t know what she was doing, how could she prevent hurting others and help the boy who needed her? But then, she saw the good she was doing with her tarot cards. The lives she was changing. Even saving. She kept it up until she got sick and the nosebleeds and extreme headaches became too much for her.

  There was a risk helping this boy, Daisy knew that, but she couldn’t let the curse continue. She didn’t want to die or let generations of firstborn heirs keep dying. The deaths had to stop. And Daisy knew deep in her heart that it was up to her to end it.

  She had saved for two years to make this trip. All three of her sisters had pitched in as well. On her seventeenth birthday, her family and friends had given her cash gifts. Thankfully, since it was Aster’s wedding, her dad bought the entire family airline tickets to Amsterdam, extending her and Iris’s trip at her mom’s request. Her mom told her dad that Iris, now twenty, was going with her to sightsee as a graduation trip before Daisy went off to college.

  Daisy closed her eyes. The creaking and rumbling of the airplane, the throat clearing, and the snoring a few rows up from them faded.

  Stepping through customs, Daisy dragged her carry-on behind her, the wheels clattering over the tile floor. Keeping up with Iris was like trying to catch a racehorse. She wove effortlessly through the foot traffic.

  Daisy cut through the smell of brewed coffee. Overhead, a woman recited a PSA announcement about unattended bags in several different languages. Iris stopped to read the directional signs, and Daisy caught up.

  Iris glanced at her. “You’re a mess. Your ponytail is all ratted in the back, and you have mascara smudged under your eyes.”

  Daisy ran her hand over her hair. It was bumpy, and there were several loose strands. She pulled a frown at Iris. “How do you look so put together?”

  “I touched myself up in the airplane’s restroom while you were sleeping. This way,” she said, nodding to a sign that pointed in the direction of the trains. They were to meet Andrei at a place he’d called the Meeting Point—a large red-and-white checkered structure that sort of looked like a Rubik’s Cube. Daisy and Iris had only packed one carry-on bag and a stuffed backpack each. Traveling across Europe, they needed to go light.

  They made their way to the agreed spot. It wasn’t hard to miss the big structure—it stood out next to the train ticket booth like someone just dropped a huge checkered box in the middle of the plaza.

  “What does he look like?” Iris asked, her eyes moving over the many drivers holding signs with names printed on them and passengers sitting on cubes sticking out of the structure for seats.

  “Tall, lanky…total nerd-type.” And no one resembled that description in the area.

  The infinity scar on her wrist throbbed. It only did that when someone around her had the fate of death. Fate changers received the brand when bonding with their tarot cards. She pushed her beaded bracelets aside and rubbed at it. Looking around, a sadness settled over her like a thick fog darkening the beach back home.

  She scanned the area, wondering who was on the cusp of dying. Was it the seventysomething couple huddled in front of the train-schedule display or the man in his thirties eating an overstuffed sandwich or a member of the five middle-aged women by the enormous Rubik’s Cube completely looking and acting like tourists? It was hard to tell. And since she couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t ask to check everyone’s fate, she pushed her bracelets back down and tried to ignore the feeling.

  “I’m not sure what he looks like now,” Daisy continued. The feeling wasn’t going away. People fated to die crossed her path often. When there was no one else around, she’d do something. But here? In a busy terminal? Not a chance.

  “What?” Iris shot her a puzzled look. “You’ve never seen a selfie or something? He’s on Snapchat, right?”

  “He never posts on it. I’ve only seen older photos of him—” If she had brakes on her shoes, they would’ve screeched when she spotted her name on one of the many signs and suddenly stopped.

  “Is that him?” Obviously, Iris had seen it, too. The completely hot guy, who made up every girl’s fantasy of the perfect European male, holding a white cardboard sign with her last name misspelled on it. Tall and muscled with dark, wavy hair, he stood there with all the confidence that Daisy lacked.

  “Um… yes?” Daisy said.

  Iris looked over at her. “Yeah, you should be speechless. We get to hang out with that for twelve days. Come on. It’s creepy to stare too long.” She carted her suitcase over to him.

  Daisy snapped out of her daze and rushed after Iris.

  “Hi,” Iris said. “That’s us. I mean her.” She nodded at Daisy. “You must be Andrei. I’m Iris.”

  “Good to meet you,” he said and glanced over at Daisy. “And we finally get to meet in real life.” He had a slight Romanian accent just like Miri, but his was almost a whisper of one.

  “You look…I mean, hello,” Daisy said and stuck out her hand. He hesitated before taking it in his. His face scrunched a little like when you’re afraid of touching metal and getting shocked. She practically tore his arm from its socket eagerly shaking his hand, and she wanted to kick herself for being so ridiculous.

  “Let me help you with your bags,” he said to Iris, taking the handle from her.

  Right. Help the prettier sister.

  “The bus pickup�
�s this way. It’s going to rain, so we should hurry.” He turned and walked off, the suitcase jumping over the deep seams in the tile floor behind him.

  Iris leaned closer to Daisy. “That wasn’t awkward. At all. I thought you were going to rip his arm off.”

  “Shut up.” Daisy gripped her handle tight. “What’s up with him taking your bag instead of mine?”

  Iris kept pace with her. “Obviously, it’s because mine is bigger and looks more stuffed than yours. Don’t read more into it than there is. You’re always doing that.”

  “I am not.” Daisy stopped. “Wait. What do you mean by that?”

  “You always assume everyone’s scared of you.”

  “Because they are,” Daisy mumbled and let Iris get a few steps ahead of her.

  They walked out the sliding doors. The sky was a slate gray, and the hint of impending rain scented the air. Tall green stalks stuck out of the dark soil in the several rows of large planters adorning the entrance of the airport. The planters had wide rims made to use as bench seats.

  Andrei must have noticed Daisy’s eyes traveling over the potted garden. “Sunflowers. The next time you’re here, when you’re on your way home, they’ll be in bloom.”

  “Nice,” she said, not bothering to tell him she knew a sunflower stalk when she saw one. She had hung out in her mom’s floral shop since she was a baby. Her mom was obsessed with flowers. Even named her and her sisters after them. And unlike Aster, the eldest, Daisy loved anything that bloomed. Her dream was to have her own store one day. But not just a small-town one like her mom’s. She wanted to create unique arrangements and have a swanky place in New York City. Daisy’s creations were like art, and she wanted to cater to celebrities.

  The look on his face as he watched her was puzzling. Was he angry? What did she say to upset him?

  “This way,” he said, his voice a little gruff as he marched down the sidewalk dragging Iris’s bag with him.

  Daisy looked at Iris. “What did I do?”

  Iris frowned. “Nice? Really? You said it short and rude like.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did, too,” she said, buttoning up her sweater. “Come on, or we’ll lose him. I don’t understand why you two are acting like strangers. Haven’t you been talking for… What? Two years?”