A Serpent In The Embers – Thea Atkinson

The sisters had gone silent. The tension was so palpable, my heart felt like it was going to pound its way through my rib cage. “The blade sings at her whisper,” Sevina said in intonation, a prayer of rote making her voice raspy as paper being scorched by flame. “The Mother speaks through her tongue.” Stone glanced at me, and in the time it took to catch my eyes and open his mouth to speak the question I knew sat on his lips, the air began to rain with knuckles and heels and skulls as more sisters tossed in their lots.

“Too late,” I said without meaning to speak. “It’s way way way too late.” Stone swung in a circle at the sound of my voice, watching more lengths of bone fly in and land around his feet. They littered the ground around him. Shin bones, femurs. A piece of skull. Someone had tossed in a pelvis, a macabre echo that also served to foreshadow the tosser’s intent. To me, it looked like every one of my sisters cast their lot for him, save the ones who were too young.

A pang of guilt rose to my throat as I watched Stone struggling to hide his confusion behind a mask of stoic disinterest. “What in the holy gods is going on?” he demanded. My eyes closed on their own, refusing to take in one more inch of the scene. “Life,” I said. “And death. That’s what’s going on.” “What have you done?”

he asked me in a soft exhale that came like a gentle breeze over my skin. The warm, cocooning scent of caramel and butter moved over the air. No accusation, though it should have been. Only the ache of bewilderment and that nearly undid me more than any righteous anger could. “I lost you,” I said, voice cracking. My head hung and I squeezed my eyes closed.

I’VE NEVER REFUSED TO kill a man. Not for mercy. Not for guilt or love. Mortal, fae, shifter, troll. Whatever creed or creature I’m hired to kill, I do it without over-thinking because emotion was never good for business. There have been demi-gods, vampires and more over my long career. An angel once, though that was for pleasure, not payment. I will never regret that kill. It brought me joy instead of barter. But killing isn’t all I do. Sometimes, it’s simple larceny or surveillance, sometimes magic collection, the same as soldiers from the human mafia do for their bosses.

Like them, I don’t quibble over the job I take. It’s just that murder pays the best. So three days and six hours into tailing the high fae male whose commission had pulled me from the shadows of the Nocturnes and into the rot of the Iron Kingdom—I found myself crouched in a thicket beside a stone and stucco stable, shivering beneath the hush of twilight and wondering why I hadn’t killed the bastard already. Chapter 1 The grass was slick with dew after a humid afternoon, and it tickled my forearm in ways that felt uncomfortably like fingers whispering over my skin.

I had to shift my weight to avoid the long fronds. I knew without counting that exactly five long fronds of weeds had laid beads of water on my bare arm. An odd, asymmetrical number that itched things in my psyche. I knew how far up my shin my leather breeks had gotten soaked from trampling through puddles and wet fields as I tried to keep out of sight during the trek.

The clamminess of the material as it stuck to me in places near drove me mad. I knew the distance between the stable where my mark sat and the place where I hid. I could notch back an arrow and hit him in the throat neatly with a single strike.

But I didn’t. Too much was riding on this hit. He was the second in command of the Shadow Court, and Aiofe, Queen of the Stygian Darkness herself had called me forth to complete the job.

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: eb0de98b1d1bc498
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,149,842 bytes (1.097 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 201
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 269.11 minutes
• Total Words: 53,822
• Total Characters: 287,000
• Average Words per Page: 267.77
• Average Characters per Page: 1427.86

Most Frequent Words

said (293), i’d (177), one (158), like (157), magic (148), back (145), knew (140), stone (138), didn’t (138), fae (124), even (123), way (122), voice (113), time (110), darkness (105), nocturnes (102), enough (100), sisters (99), face (97), felt (95), know (95), moment (93), eyes (92), though (91), long (88), made (86), head (86), see (86), breath (84), let (82), couldn’t (81), hand (79), thought (79), now (77), against (76), wasn’t (76), took (76), gaze (74), air (72), beneath (71), something (71), power (70), sevina (69), hands (65), body (65), light (65), throat (63), feet (61), wanted (61), take (60), words (60), sister (59), held (59), every (59), enyali (59), looked (58), around (57), away (57), life (56), temple (56), never (55), much (53), still (53), magics (52), skin (51), inside (51), look (50), think (50), pain (50), want (49), madre (49), between (48), shadow (48), blood (48), toward (48), myself (47), fingers (47), death (47), it’s (46), shadows (46), arms (46), nothing (45), behind (45), first (44), place (44), yet (44), morrakai (44), realm (43), mine (43), without (42), aiofe (42), bone (42), he’d (41), another (41), thing (40), already (39), left (39), sound (39), almost (39), chapter (38).

PDF Download