Honey And Harm – Devan Barlow

I’d worked so hard for the knowledge I had, yet I still didn’t know enough to know what I was missing. And now I was unprepared for an enemy who could turn my own curse against me. Emelia watched me, with something like respect in her gaze. “We will talk later,” I said. She nodded as if she understood. Yet when I looked to Arnaud he’d detached from Emelia’s siblings. He met my gaze, but before I could speak he staggered away from me, back into the house.

I started after him, but then the bees returned. Their buzzing was thick with warning, and I realized what was still wrong. Something was missing. I should have gone after Arnaud. Instead I took off in the direction the bees had come from. Behind me, Emelia spoke, but I couldn’t make out her words.

I fell. Magic streamed out of me as though I’d been deflated. I wanted to scream. Maybe I did scream. Cora wasn’t on Brokenstar anymore. OceanofPDF.com Cora efore I reached Hester, a wail burst from Brokenstar’s soil. I staggered, the Estate’s pain and surprise washing over me like a cold, stinging wave.

Brokenstar was panicking, battering against my body and mind as it begged me to help it. Hester had knotted me so tightly into her own magic, the soil thought me part of her. Suddenly, I understood its distress, growing nauseous in sympathy as my body tried to rid itself of what it thought was inside it. Arnaud’s curse was back. One of the Estate’s Rulers was nullifying magic, and the land didn’t know how to deal with this.

It was an imperfect thing, lines of power flickering in and out like they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do, but I couldn’t calm the Holding no matter how I tried. Knowing what this curse did to the land made me hate Hester even more. I wrenched back enough control over myself to get to the nearest window. Outside, Hester had Arnaud in her arms.

I raced to the next window, and the next, and the next, until I saw three unfamiliar figures near the barrier. I went numb, not even Brokenstar’s pain distracting me from them. “Julie!” I beckoned her over and she looked out at them, hissing. “What can you see?” I panted, bracing myself on the windowsill as I fought through the nausea. “They woke up the curse,” she said disbelievingly. I stared at those figures, their forms menacing though distance blurred their details. I looked at Julie.

“They’ve unbalanced Brokenstar. That means they’ve weakened Hester’s hold on me.” That meant I might be able to get out. Julie understood immediately. “GO!” I flew down the stairs toward the kitchen storerooms.

Foolish Hopes and Spilled Entrails: Retellings Shells For Hearts: Retellings Honey and Harm (Coming Soon) Watch for more at Devan Barlow’s site. OceanofPDF.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page Copyright Page Also By Devan Barlow Honey and Harm Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Epilogue About the Author OceanofPDF.com HONEY AND HARM By Devan Barlow Content Warnings Please note, this story contains: death of a parent, death of a sibling, sororicide, violence, forced captivity, restriction of bodily autonomy, emotional manipulation OceanofPDF.com M PROLOGUE y sister killed my sister with a spell of honey and iced-over midnight.

Now here we are, on blood-won land. The story of a beautiful girl, and the curse that she broke. Of true selves discovered, and evil vanquished. So often, stories forget beautiful girls never exist all by themselves. But no shadow lasts forever. OceanofPDF.com B CHAPTER ONE Cora rokenstar was the most beautiful cage. The air coming though my window was pleasantly warm, punctuated only by the vague sound of bees carrying out their work.

I was trapped in this Holding more surely than those bees were trapped to hive-life and honey-making. Several of Brokenstar’s wights floated into my room. They mostly invisible, yet had a presence like frost on a spring morning, displacing the air they moved through. If I looked at them long enough, I got a vague impression of their shapes, an uncanny fusion of human and honey bee. Arms and legs connected to a round, striped body, held aloft by busy wings. Antennae twitched atop their heads, yet I never truly saw their faces.

These shreds of Hester and Arnaud’s magic were bound to the Holders’ commands. Hester, my older sister, had been brave and glorious enough to break the curse that once afflicted the wights, as it did Brokenstar’s other Holder, Arnaud. Did the wights think of Hester with gratitude now that she ruled alongside Arnaud, or did they know enough about her by now to think of her as I did? Once they realized I was already out of bed, the wights pulled away, disappearing through the walls as quickly as they’d appeared.

But I took their meaning: Hester liked when I breakfasted with her and Arnaud. I knew I should change out of my nightgown and head downstairs, but instead I went onto my balcony. My room was on the fifth floor of the Brokenstar manor. If the view hadn’t been of a place I detested, it would have been enviable. The air smelled of pansies from the overfull boxes of the flowers on my windowsill and those of all the other rooms on this level.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 8d4c14b3b4f83d0c
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,151,638 bytes (1.098 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 322
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 352.67 minutes
• Total Words: 70,533
• Total Characters: 386,734
• Average Words per Page: 219.05
• Average Characters per Page: 1201.04

Most Frequent Words

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