When Nelle Wychthorn was forced to sign herself away in marriage, she should have read the contract's fine print. Because she signs not with ink, but with blood. And that changes everything.
Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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Fiery Nelle, the isolat...
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I swayed, clinging to the thin top of a cedar tree as storm winds surged around me. Reedy branches slapped against my body and fern-like needles scratched at my exposed skin. Currents of wind tore at my hair, snapping my tie and jacket that had torn in places as I clambered my way up here.
Where is she, where is, she where is she—
Lightning erupted, scorching the sky in a flash of white.
Thunder exploded.
Nelle had swifted and there was no way I could easily track her. But up here at the canopy, adrift in an ocean of trees bending with the gusts and swell of wind—something might give me a clue.
The sky shuddered in vibrant skipping light.
There—
Right there—
Lightning had forked in the exact same spot only a moment ago.
***
I found Nelle in a small clearing.
The earth was barren of life, the greenery burnt so thoroughly by the silver fire dancing behind her figure nothing was left.
The front of her dress was stuck to her sweat-slick chest that heaved for breath. She looked like a wraith with her pale hair and the fine layers of the silver dress—soot-stained and burned—teased by the wild wind she spun through the clearing. Filaments of magic weaved around her lithe body like sea anemones swaying beneath the ocean and silver fire reached almost as high as the treetops.
She was balanced upon the remains of a tree, whose broken trunk had collapsed on the woodland floor to rot and now was half aflame. Her head was tipped to the sky, and the sight of tears glistening on her cheeks had my throat tightening. I'd come to a stumbling halt at the edge of the clearing, my eyes wide and my heart thumping at my ribs. Her berry-sweet scent flowed on a current of wind, beckoned to me, and it took restraint to remain enclosed in the treeline and not go to her.
The clouds hovered low, so low it looked as if she could touch them. Bending both knees she cupped her hands, and as she drew her fingers apart, fire expanded between her palms in a ball of flames. Springing up, she threw the flaming ball skywards, so she ended up on her tippy-toes as the fire razed through the clouds like lightning.
Thunder boomed a second later and rippled across the horizon.
Stretched on her toes, arms outstretched to the sky, the silver flames and slender threadlike magic glanced over her slender body and swirling the ends of her moonlit hair.
Gods, she was ethereal. Otherworldly.
My mother's soft voice haunted me, one of the last things she'd shared with me—She's going to be something we've never seen before. Someone unique. Someone who could rival the Horned Gods themselves.
