Tarnished Embers Novels & Stories

Ember The throne room doesn’t feel like a prison anymore. That realization should scare me more than chains ever could, but it doesn’t. It feels right. It feels like I belong here. The walls glow softly, not with firelight but with something warmer, like dusk stretched thin across stone. Tall windows pour in sunlight that shouldn’t exist here, banners of obsidian and gold stirring as if there’s a breeze. The air smells like incense and embers instead of blood and rot.

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.

Carla and Travis watched from the sidelines, hands clasped. “We did it,” Carla said, her voice steady. Travis nodded. “And we’re just getting started.” The scars remained, but they were no longer wounds. Dave, Carla, and the other victims were healing, not just surviving but thriving, their journeys a testament to resilience, love, and the unyielding power of talent reclaimed. ----- This marks the end of the Burning Embers: Scorching Tales of Desire. Compiled short story arcs now made their way to their ends. See you next time. There'll be more ahead. Thank you!

The flames went up, penetrating the maurium, and disappeared with a bright, momentary flash of light which left the lamplight a shimmering, radiant gold. "Ah, yes," he said happily, "that is better, isn't it?" "It is," she said, smiling. ‘Amazing how they do that.' "Will it stay like that?" she asked him. "No,” he sighed with the voice of some lament. "Pyrite must be maintained. The same is not true of maurium. Maurium is the natural state of planetyroid's decay, whereas pyrite is the restoration of its original intent. We inhabit a world which lends itself to decay rather than intention and maurium more than pyrite."

I didn't find those spiritual eyes anyplace I didn't find that glowing face anyplace Neither I found those heartfelt talks Nor that fresh youthful attractiveness anyplace I roamed the whole world but I couldn't find anyone like You I roamed the whole world but I couldn't find anyone like You I didn't find that romantic laugh at anyplace I didn't find that pleasing fragrance anyplace I didn't witness that colourful style/grace at anyplace I didn't find that lovely innocence at anyplace Always remain as you are I roamed the whole world but I couldn't find anyone like you I roamed the whole world but I couldn't find anyone like you I roamed the whole world but I couldn't find anyone like you

The terror in her dialed irises confirmed his suspicion. His aura turned more cold and dark if possible. A small chuckle vibrated from his rough throat. Her unshed tears , she was trying so hard to control, started streaming down like waterfall, studying his deranged reaction. She was doomed. In hands of man who was her sinner, her tormentor, the man who ruined her.

“They wanted to harness rogue power, weaponize it. That’s when the other Starfire was discovered.” The fire in the hearth crackled, sending sparks into the air, but no one spoke. Finally, Dax broke the silence. “And you’re sure they’re real? That they’re not just some fabrication?” “Oh, they’re real,” Ronan confirmed. “They were taken in young—too young to remember anything but what the Council fed them. I don’t know their name, only their title: Ember.” Vivi’s pulse stuttered. Something in her gut twisted painfully, as if the universe itself recognized the weight of that name.