Tarnished Embers Novels & Stories

Then I looked at our daughter, who opened her eyes and didn't cry and looked at me like she already knew what I was. From the ashes and the fire, something beautiful was born. "Ember," I say. Jolie's breath catches. She knows immediately—I can see her take the shape of it, hold it up to the light, understand everything in it. The element of transformation: coal that becomes fire that becomes something that outlasts both. The thing that stays lit after everything else has burned. The beginning that looks like an end until it doesn't. "Ember Ash Kane," she whispers.

"But the stains remain. Perhaps the land will drink it better than I could ever scrub it away." He turned and pointed to the garden’s edge. "You’ll start there. With the dying olive trees. Make them live again. If they do, perhaps we’ll believe your heart does too." Catherine bowed and walked without resistance to her task. As she knelt to the earth, Isabella whispered, "What if this is how redemption begins?" "Then let it begin," Arthur said. --- The following months bloomed with change. The sanctuary, now renamed The House of Ember Grace, spread across the valleys like fire catching dry brush. But unlike the fires of old, it destroyed nothing. Instead, it consumed despair and left new life

Emberflame. It had not been an ordinary fire. It had been lineage-bound. Glimmering gold, sovereign-defined flame that answered only to blood and crown. It had lived in the marrow of their queen, threaded through her veins like molten inheritance. When she fell—when he had watched her flame gutter and collapse into ash beneath a sky choked with cinders—the Emberflame had died with her. Not weakened. Not scattered. Extinguished entirely. He had felt that ending in his bones, a severing that rippled through the battlefield like the snapping of a divine tether.

I use my better judgement and hold off until I get to the casino. Forty-five minutes later I’ve checked into my room and am now getting my belongings organized for the night. I don’t plan on leaving the room, so I start the shower and turn on my portable speaker. I sit on the bathroom floor that is now covered in the extra pillows from the bed and let the sound of water and music sooth me. I let my head fall back against the wall and start trying to unravel the emotions that have me on edge. As my emotions rise, I feel my eyes start to blur from the tears that are building up inside of them. I take a deep breath to calm myself and then I open a bottle of Martini-Rossi and light a cigarette.

The soil remembers its blood. She lifted a hand and the world around them twisted— Fire. Screams. The mountain cracking like bone under pressure. Wolves tearing into wolves. Humans fleeing the forest. And the sky above—bleeding silver light, torn by shadow. In the center of it all, Ember saw herself. Her child. Asher. Julian. Vivianne. Even Aiden. All caught in a storm they couldn’t stop. **EMBER (shaken)** Tell me how to stop it.

“I’m tying up loose ends. That’s what family does, isn’t it? Protects its legacy. We’ve wiped every trace of your existence—no name, no records, no past. To the world, you don’t exist. Why keep you alive, when you are invisible to the world?” My blood turned cold, but I refused to let him see the fear creeping up my spine. I straightened my shoulders, keeping my gaze locked on his. “You’re a coward, Kirill,” I spat, “Hiding behind your poisons and chains. You couldn’t even finish me off face-to-face. You all are losers and always will be losers” I laughed bitterly.

Unfolding it, I saw it was a secret letter, handwritten by Elder Grayson himself: Ember, the power of the bloodline within you is far greater than you imagine. The Moon Goddess's gift would not be wasted on a mere mortal. While the silver poison tortures your wolf, it is also purifying the impurities from your soul. When you walk out of this place, you will be truly reborn. Remember, you are not some abandoned stray. You are a warrior forged in the Goddess's own fire. I clutched the paper, the despair in my eyes slowly being replaced by a steely resolve. You have to live, Ember. You have to make every single one of them pay.

*Amber* As I walk between Tjeck and Logan, the park looms ahead, a haunting reminder of the chaos that has unfolded. The ground still bears the grim evidence of the war… a tapestry of bloodstains, abandoned weapons, and the shells of spent ammunition scattered like forgotten memories. Each step I take is accompanied by the weight of history, reminding me that war leaves indelible scars, etching its marks not only on the body and soul but on the very fabric of the world around us.

Just before stepping into the night, he spoke over his shoulder: “Burn everything they touched.” ---