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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Stones rattled as I scrambled along the riverbank and stumbled over rocks damp from the sprays of spindrift scattered by the wild river churning beside me.
Cutting away from the tumbling water, I clambered frantically inward, across wild grasses and tussock, pushing fiercely through hip-high scrub until I reached the point where we'd fallen. Terror squeezed my heart when my gaze found Graysen. Loose earth that had come free from the cliff face was flattened beneath his limp body.
My feet slipped and skidded on the mound of fresh sodden earth as I stumbled toward him. My knees sank into soft dirt as I knelt beside his body.
He lay broken and still. His black eyes stared blankly up at the bright blue sky, vacant and lifeless. Blood spilled from his mouth, his nose, and the back of his crushed skull. The complexion of his golden skin had paled. The wyrmfire and Ukkenskrit tattoos weaving up his throat were a vibrant contrast against ashen flesh.
His chest wasn't moving.
Crushing panic devoured the remaining shards of my heart.
My hands shook as I checked for a pulse.
I couldn't find one.
I COULDN'T FIND A PULSE!
Do something!—I screamed at the thing inside me.
Anything—I begged it—ANYTHING!
But it was roiling and screaming, hurling itself at the dark magic that had it trapped.
I roared at the gods, at every god I could think of. At Hazus, ruler of Nine Hells, Collector of Souls—Give him back to me! Give him back! GIVE HIM BACK!
Tears clung to my eyelashes and trickled down my cheeks. And my heart, my godsdamned heart, rattled inside my empty chest and ached so viciously I knew it would never mend.
Graysen was dead.
My shoulders slumped as I let out my grief in a raw, sorrowful wail.
I don't know how much time had passed, how long I'd keened, bowed over his corpse, my tears splashing upon his blood-flecked cheeks.
Everything had faded into the background—the rushing sound of the river, the breeze coursing through the swaying brush, the sound of birdcall. There was just me, numb, in a body I no longer recognized. I couldn't feel him. I couldn't feel that awareness that bound us together, that had always been there since we'd first laid eyes on one another as children, nor could I feel those filaments of magic that had been forged into something deeper as we'd grown closer. Now there was nothing...nothing but vast nothingness...
And my heart thudding in an empty chest...
And a crinkling—
Crinkling?
I blinked, furiously wiping away the tears from my eyes, my senses sharp and alert.
The sound—almost indiscernible—was coming from Graysen. From inside him.
by AvaLarksen
