MasukEmoryNo one really liked the company I kept with Ronan. It was supposed to be a secret. But I was caught. They believe he was manipulative. But he makes see the truth, and I’ll show you.When I woke, the air felt wrong. Cold, sharp, like it was burning from the inside out.The tent walls moved with torchlight, but the flames weren’t right either, black fire, quiet, swallowing light instead of giving it. My body hurt all over. The veins in my arms looked darker than before, like something alive was crawling under my skin.Ronan called it a blessing. I called it a curse.The pain had stopped surprising me. It was just there now, steady, heavy, something I’d earned. Maybe that’s what I deserved. My father’s voice still echoed in my head sometimes, You’re not ready. And Rain’s voice, softer, begging me not to let vengeance take me. I did anyway.The tent flap opened. Ronan stepped in, tall as ever, calm as ever. His wrist caught the light, that mark, the split-wolf sigil, faintly
KolIt was late in the morning, or at least it seemed to be.The estate was still burning. The eastern wall produced smoke, which was very long and sickly, and stuck to your clothes and could not be removed. The garden that had been the secure home of Rain was now a cemetery of smouldering roots and shattered rock. My house, my heritage, resembled an old war scene: broken windows, dead men, and the too heavy silence. They said dawn meant renewal. But death and ash were all that I could smell.There were too many ghosts in the courtyard, but they were not literal. These were alive men and women that would not even look at me straight. Guards, healers, servants, all of them whispering behind hands, their voices soft as the wind that carried our ruin.I heard the words again and again, the new name they’d given her: The Bloodseer.They said it with reverence and fear in equal measure.I didn’t correct them. I couldn’t.From the balcony above, I saw them carry what was left of the dead
RainThe world was on fire before I had opened my eyes.I could feel smoke tearing my throat, bitter and lively, and my lungs were full of metal and ash. There was some screaming somewhere nearby. Farther on there was howling, too deep, too wrong, to be human.As I attempted to move, the ground I was on cracked. The garden which I had literally used as my haven before the training was not there any more, the one I had been able to hide between training and sketch in the silence. Roses grew black in their beds. The angels of the fountain were made of marble, and their heads were missing. The atmosphere was smoldering with non-wholly fire.And of it all, the Blood Moon still remained, still, bleeding blood over the estate like an open wound.I could feel it.Every heartbeat in the chaos.Every pulse of life, every breath, every dying gasp.It wasn’t sight, not sound, more like the rhythm of the world had folded inside me. For a moment, I thought I’d gone mad. Then I realized I could tel
Author The night arrived slowly to the Lannister estate, not in darkness, in a reddish hush, deep and heavy and quail-like, as though the air itself were waiting.The clouds were thin to-night, and on them the Blood Moon was swollen and looming above the treeline. Its color leaked over the windows, and the marble floors were blazed with rust. Three souls kept their house sleeping, but hearing this same beat of feet coming nearer.RainRain woke to fire.The dream was as sticky as ash to her skin, Kol was on his knees, his chest stabbed through by a black spear, and behind him stood Emory, with his eyes flaming gold.She jumped and sat up, her flesh covered with sweat. It was a heartbeat though she fancied that despite the dream the dream had pursued her into reality and that her room was dimly lit in red, the blood-coloured sky in her dream.Her pulse stuttered. The air was wrong. Heavy. Watching.Her legs fell out of the bed and she walked to the window. The glass was cold, and as s
AgathaI had always thought that punishment was over when the judgment was pronounced, that, when my sins had been pronounced, the burden would be taken off my shoulders. But I was wrong. Punishment didn't end. It simply changed shape.Mercy had been called by the Council. That was what they said that morning when they took me before them the last time, chained at the wrists, with guards to watch me, who shuddered were I to snort too loudly. The atmosphere in the room was full of incense and hypocrisy. Mercy, they said, because I had once been Kol Lannister’s mate. Mercy, because I had children. Mercy, because the family was already too broken to bear another death.So I was to live, but only within the walls of my room. Guarded, watched, whispered about. Mercy tasted a lot like exile.When they sent me back to the outer estate, I didn’t cry. I think I had run out of tears weeks ago, somewhere between betrayal and blood. Now, I only felt the dull ache of survival. The kind that
AuthorWhen morning came, it was red even through the mist that clung to the hills around the Lannister estate. From the looks of it all, it hdd as painted the white marble halls with a dash of rose and ash. And if anyone saw what was happening, it seemed like a quiet warning that something in the world was shifting, a balance tipping too far to be pulled back.Inside her room, Rain had not slept. Her journal lay open on the windowsill next to her, filled with drawings she couldn't remember making, sigils, faces, things that seemed more at home in the firelight than the daylight. She saw that some of the lines were written in her hand, and some were written in a script she didn't recognize at all.She continued to stare at them until she noticed her reflection in the window. It wasn't as if she had been trying to see herself. Staring into the reflection, she didn't recognize her own face; the girl looking back at her was no longer hollow, her hair hung loosely around her framed face,







