Fated Loss (Red Rose & Black Ash Book 1) by Claudia Caren

Author:Claudia Caren [Caren, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PaperHeart Press
Published: 2017-07-29T05:00:00+00:00



From the very beginning, hate was constantly present in Ash's life. Ash was hated by her mother because Ash was a reminder of her mother's mistake. Ash was hated by her father because Ash was a reminder of his wife's betrayal. Even her eleven siblings looked down on her and treated her like she was an inferior.

They were a very poor family, so at meals Ash was only given scraps and nothing if food was scarce. Her parents kept her out of sight as much as possible by sending her to the woods to forage for edible plants despite rain or snow. They didn't even provide shoes when the weather was especially bad. Dinner and bed were the only times Ash was allowed to come home.

Ash didn't handle the unfairness of life well. Those long hours outside gave her time to be cruel. At age eight Ash started venting her anger in unhealthy ways. It started from little things such as yanking flowers from her neighbor's painstakingly planted mailbox garden. Then it progressed to throwing stones at birds for fun. It took a while and many tries for Ash to actually hit one and kill it. At first she felt sorry for the pigeon that lay dead at her feet. But that feeling of regret faded with each bird she killed until it no longer existed. Instead, it was replaced by a sense of victory when she took out a bird with a single shot.

Soon killing birds became boring for Ash, and she moved on to setting things on fire. In the beginning she was careful and only set fire to small twigs or crumpled balls of paper. Then one day the small campfire she built in the forest grew out of control and caught on a nearby tree. Soon a large section of the forest was in flames, and Ash didn't try to stop it. Instead, she loved the way the heat licked her skin and how the woodland creatures scurried for cover.

After being forced to do things and ordered around by her family, Ash felt powerful as the fire turned the once thriving woods into her namesake. She had started this, this was her doing, and she thought it was magnificent.

Ash returned to the forest the next day, wanting to send the rest of the woods to smoke and flames, but she forgot to bring matches. That didn't stop her, though. On her third try, a spark flew from her fingertips. A few minutes later, she could shoot columns of fire with hardly any effort. Destruction just became even easier for her.

But that feeling of power vanished once Ash returned home. As the economy plunged over the years, her family became even crueler to her. And since food was becoming increasingly harder to come by, Ash went hungry more often than not. The only reason her parents kept her was because she was another pair of hands that could do the chores and a convenient person to yell at when they wanted to vent out their anger.

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