Excerpt
A lavender and beeswax candle burned on the table beside our bed, its fragrance the key that unlocked my past. While my Spark held me close, whispering sweet nothings into my ear, a golden thread at last uncoiled.
Under a starlit sky my love saw for the first time the memories I shared with Samantha Sutter. He heard our shared pain. He saw our fierce bond.
And he felt the loss left in her absence.
A dream is just a dream, until the Enlightened truth is revealed, and then it shatters.
Sam and Jo have lost their bond. Their glimmering golden thread has snapped. Heartbroken, and alone for the first time in their existence, the only comfort they have found is in the arms of the one that now holds these shimmering fibers.
But the saga continues as this deadly game of chess continues.
Cepheus is at war.
A whisper is now a haunted presence on Earth.
The secrets continue to mount with few answers revealed.
But the real gut punch is the hidden truth behind the abrupt departure of this mystical connection. A secret Jo is determine to take to her grave.
Black boots drum in perfect rhythm along the battlefields while this lethal game of chess claims more pieces.
The whisper becomes a battle call with new allies emerging from the most unlikely of places.
Will Jo win her father’s deadly game of chess? Will Sam unravel the mystery behind the Marked and Enlightened? And will either of them ever feel the other again?
The clock is once again ticking. Lethal moves are being played. And a determined sister will emerge, her own hunger for answers refusing to take a back seat, her own secrets blowing up both their worlds.
Descent
CHAPTER ONE
The Beginning
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A crisp wind stirred, lifting amber leaves, the woods eerily silent. The fragments of dead nature swept through the cool breeze as a curtain of haunting light fell upon the forest.
A full moon hung. A blood moon.
The time had come.
She gathered her supplies and headed for the deep, dense forest, her goodbyes stated, her words short.
Her sisters were gone. Safe. Never would they be found. Never would they be harmed.
With a heart filled with resolve she now stood at the stump of a mighty oak tree, wind chilling her limbs, sorrow filling her soul.
The tips of her fingers bled, her nails clipped to the quick before they fell, their half-moon clippings collected, then placed in a stone bowl.
A dulled knife met her red, ringleted hair. She pulled it taut and cut.
Red curls fell to a second stone bowl.
Tears fell. Tears were collected.
A third stone bowl filled with the salty droplets— her offering abundant.
Three bowls were gathered. Two met a candle’s wick.
Slowly hair burned and fingernails charred.
The contents of two bowls then met the contents of the third. Dark ash was pummeled; a thick, black ooze was created. A quill and parchment were gathered.
Her hands shook as her words met paper. More tears fell. The quill once more dipped into the thick, homemade substance—conviction for her action found in a world she no longer wished to reside in.
Her lips drew close to the parchment once her chant was completed. Frigid breath blew.
She took a deep breath, looked to the blood moon, and lifted the parchment to a flickering wick.
Paper smoldered as she chanted the words written on the tear-stained sheet. Embers drifted upward.
Her voice grew louder. Her will hardened.
Flames licked up the parchment. More ash drifted upward.
Rain fell.
Wind soared.
More amber leaves drifted.
More flaming sparkles blew upward.
Small embers gathered at her feet. Orange heated sparks caught the sky.
Her chant continued. Her voice carried in the breeze.
Words, both on paper and in the air, ignited—the parchment and her body now one.
Her wish was heard. Her wish was lifted.
Flickers of fiery ash drifted upward; she, herself the embers now, drifted upward.
Rain pelted.
Wind howled.
Soil rumbled.
Heated cinders ascended.
She whispered as she was carried away—her voice echoing in the elements—her heart hopeful. Her soul at last finding peace.
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