I know, I know, I know… It’s been a long time coming. Sometimes life just gets in the way. That said…
The third and final book for Of Dust & Darkness is ready to drop this month! If you haven’t already, click here to check out the deets on this dark fae trilogy and see pre-sale links as they become available. Release date February 25, 2022. Also up for grabs will be the complete trilogy, available exclusively at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
TAKE A PEEK!
The fire glows hot and bright, its tendrils lashing upward and out as it greedily seeks its next consumable. The faerie city lay in ruins, my smile widening as I pan, taking in the endless destruction that encircles me. The heat engulfing the area is extreme, but not for me so much as the carcasses I weave between on the hot and gooey blackened ground. I can feel the fire’s very essence as it warms the soles of my shoes. It lives; breathes as steady as my own chest.
May they all just burn.
The left side of my mouth hitches upward when I realize I’m not the only one without wings anymore.
Some managed to flee, but most were caught off guard as the strike happened in the early hours of the morning. Their silence is as soft as the feather-light ashes collecting atop my bare shoulders. Gray and wispy and so delicately light. No two alike.
I whip around, the sound of a crunching boom coming from behind. “No,” I hear myself whisper in disbelief, stunned still as a world of crystalized ice rolls across the horizon. It freezes itself over my burn, suffocating the flames so rapidly its beautiful glow deadens upon impact. “No!” I say again, shouting this time, feeling the shriek of the dying flame as if a part of my soul. And all too fast it reaches and jumps over, taking me down with my beautiful creation, my lungs painfully screaming as the icy burn freezes me over from the outside in.
My body shoots forward. My mouth drops wide but my throat trembles so roughly it’s hard to tell I’m yelling – or at least trying to. My veins run cold as ice, their very lines piercing through my insides like strikes of lightning. I gasp and heave. Gasp and heave.
Bulbous clouds thick with moisture roll overhead, the breeze so strong the air whistles a mournful song. Submerged beneath the river’s surface, there’s just enough light left in the day to see the unnatural purplish tint to my soft red skin.
“Thank Mother Nature,” Jack cries, the air in his lungs flushing out with relief. His arms dip into the water and pull me upward, clear liquid sliding down my skin in slick little streams. The air is almost as chilly as the water and I immediately tighten as he takes off. The wind lashes at my tender skin, and violent shivers rip through my body as bumps erupt all across my skin, aching to burst wide open.
It takes too long to arrive at our tent, the wind brutally bullying Jack until he’s well past the treeline. The constant dipping and swaying churns my stomach. He drops me onto a thick mat, then wraps a warm blanket around my body, his hands furiously rubbing up and down my arms. The wind blows here too, but our tent hardly reacts as the air attempts to slap at the thick material pulled taut with secured knots. My chest feels slow to rise and fall – and oh, so cold. It takes a long, tight breath to force out a weak, “What happened?”