Embers & Echoes by Karsten Knight

Author:Karsten Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781442450301
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

BLIZZARDS AND SQUALLS

Saturday

Ash spun around and let the warmth from the torch on her arm wash over the figure lurking behind her.

Bleak wore the same floor-length hooded robe she always wore—did she ever wash the thing, or did she just have a closet full of them? She lingered back five yards from Ash, with her feet set and her arms slack. Hardly a threatening pose, but Ash still felt her hackles rise.

“It’s funny,” Bleak mused, “how we echo the forces of nature. The warm front collides with the cold front.” Her voice was higher than Ash had expected; she had anticipated something huskier. Bleak had a vague hint of a Scandinavian accent as well, her inflection rising and falling musically with every syllable.

“I’ve met cold fronts before,” Ash said. “You’re just a cold bitch.”

The winter goddess ignored her comment, and let her eyes float up to drink in the totem pole of ice and flesh. “Do you like my sculpture? I’ve never been much of an artist.”

Ash was trembling. Involuntarily the fire burning in her arm flared up, showering the ice with sparks. “I would never have asked Lesley Vanderbilt to be my maid of honor, and the woman is—was—a complete megalomaniac . . . but did you really have to murder her?”

“Yes,” Bleak said quietly. “She dishonored her vow to the Four Seasons. She attempted to lie and steal what is rightfully ours. And we needed to transform her into an example so you would know to stop looking for your sister.”

A drip landed on Ash’s shoulder, then another. In her frustration she was growing so hot that the ice sculpture was beginning to melt behind her. She tried to curb her growing anger before she burned a hole right through the ice beneath her. “What is my little sister to you anyway?”

Bleak rolled up her sleeves and cuffed them at the elbows, revealing the same divided circle Ash had seen in her vision. Up close, Ash could now see that each of the quadrants of the circle stood for one of the seasons. “The Four Seasons are very forward-thinking,” Bleak said. “Surely you know by now that your sister is a portal-maker, and she has access to the Cloak Netherworld?”

“So I’ve heard,” Ash muttered, thinking of Colt and his vendetta against the Cloak. “And I’d bet anything that you want to use my sister to invade their Netherworld, and destroy them so that you can get all of your memories back. What is with you people and your obsession with the past? I’ve revisited some of my old memories, and let me tell you, it just complicates the shit out of things, and it’s much better—for everyone’s sake—that we come back with a fresh start each lifetime.”

“What good will it do for us in the long run to start a new religion and spend a lifetime recruiting true believers when we won’t be able to remember any of it the next time we’re reborn?” Bleak asked. “Without our old memories we might as well be filthy mortals like everyone else.

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