I’m not too proud to admit that finding Mr. Right involves swiping right. Right? Welcome to dating in avocado toastland.
Here I am, on my first blind date, ever, courtesy of a smartphone app and my two annoying best friends.
So what is Chris “Fletch” Fletcher doing, walking across the room, looking at his phone like he’s pattern matching a picture to find a real person he’s never met before?
Oh.
Oh, no.
The guy I drop-kicked in seventh grade cannot be my blind date. The guy who earned me this infernal nickname.
It was supposed to be simple. Graduate, get a job to keep my mom from drowning in mountains of medical debt, and maybe score a scholarship to a decent college.
All of that changed in a single breath. Because it turns out I’m not human. And I just knocked out the power on an entire city block.
In a split second, all of my carefully-laid plans go up in smoke. There’s no chance for college because I’m being hauled off to Kingwood Academy. They say it’s for my own protection and those around me. But I know one thing for sure…
I’m not welcome here.
The mean girls don’t stop at insults and tripping you in the halls. They’re wielding magic that could cost me my life. And the rest of the school sees me as either a halfling that should be cast out or a powerhouse to be brought down.
Everyone except them.
The charmer. The gentle giant. The psychopath. And maybe even the cruel prince.
The royals of Kingwood Academy have taken me under their wing and I can’t help but notice how my skin hums when they touch me. I shouldn’t be dreaming about a single one of them, let alone all four. But I can’t seem to stop myself.
Only someone doesn’t like the attention the royals are showing me. And when the attacks start, the princes will do anything to protect me. But they don’t know the true evil we face. The kind who will do whatever it takes to seize our power, even if that means stealing the very last breath from our lungs…
“I was in a fire.” I blurted it out in the hopes it might distract those two from coming to blows. But I had no idea what came after that fact.
Atlas turned back to me. “When?”
“I was eight. We still don’t know exactly how it started.”
Kai let one hand drop away but left the other on my neck, his thumb stroking back and forth. “But you got out.”
“I almost didn’t.” The words were barely a whisper. “I got trapped in my bedroom. The window was too high to jump out of. The fire was outside my door. I hid in the closet. The floor beneath me collapsed and I fell through to the basement, and a beam landed on top of me. Thought I was going to die.” I rubbed at the raised skin on the inside of my arm.
Phoenix stalked forward, grabbing my arm. He let out a string of curses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I told you I didn’t like fire.”
“But not that you’d been burned. I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known you’d been through this.”
I tried to tug my arm free, but he held firm.
Atlas studied the scars leading up my arm as Phoenix held it. “You’re okay? Those look bad.
I gave my arm a hard yank and finally broke away from Phoenix’s hold. I wanted a sweatshirt more than anything right now, but I hadn’t shoved one in my bag this morning. “I know they look gross, but they aren’t that bad.”
Atlas got right up in my personal space. “That wasn’t what I said and it sure as hell wasn’t what I meant.” He lifted my arm gently and traced his fingers over the mottled and twisted skin. “There isn’t a thing about you that isn’t beautiful. But I know these mean you were in excruciating pain. That you were terrified. That’s what I meant by bad.”
I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat. “Oh.”
His lips twitched. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers tangling in the waves. “I could only ever see beauty when I look at you.”
Atlas leaned forward and my breath caught, but this time for an entirely different reason than panic. He pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth.
The buzz that lit my muscles was like nothing I’d experienced before. It was its own form of fire that terrified me in a completely different way. Sensation swept through me like a flood on the heels of the buzz.
Atlas jerked back, his fingers flying to his mouth and eyes going wide. “What the hell was that?”
A self-proclaimed ordinarily average girl meets the one larger than life person who will make her yearn for so much more.
Natalie Benton has nursed enough heartbreak in her twenty-one years. But she doesn’t like to complain even though her parents’ marriage might be falling apart, and she’s still mourning her brother, who committed suicide five years ago. On top of that, she was recently ghosted by her lover, an emotionally detached tattoo artist who ran off to California. She’s ready to graduated college in a few months but she’s not sure what her next steps will be. For now, she’ll take each day as it comes, which has become her mantra as an ordinary, average girl in Albee, Pennsylvania where nothing exciting ever happens.
But fate has other plans for Natalie, when a very not ordinary average girl enters her life. It’s the larger than life Gem Grove, one of the most popular singers of the past decade. Gem’s been hiding out in Albee while she also tries her best to take each day as it comes, but her addiction to bigger fame and fortune could lead to her downfall. The public may think she’s entitled and spoiled but she’s ready to prove them all wrong. She’s more than just a singer who performs on demand. She wants to create art with her songs and gain the respect she has always wanted.
Natalie and Gem shouldn’t fit together but they do. The ordinary average girl and the larger-than-life diva might be destined for more, but only if they can achieve it together.
“When you said you wanted to take me to your house, I wasn’t expecting on the lake.” We were twenty minutes outside Albee and surrounded by a huge lake where Dad fished almost every weekend. Most of the houses there were newer and expensive, which was definitely the case with Gem’s. She even had a hot tub in the back, facing the lake. Why would anyone need a hot tub when the lake was in their backyard?
She dropped her bag on the marble island in her kitchen that would make Mom jealous. “I don’t own the house. I’m renting for now because I was sick of staying in hotels. Also, this end of the lake has good security patrols, so I don’t have to worry too much about the press stalking me or trying to snap a picture of me, especially if I go skinny-dipping.”
I turned my head so fast, I might have strained my neck. “You swim naked in the lake in the winter?”
She lifted her hands to her mouth and laughed. “Oh my god, the look on your face is too much! I’m joking. I moved in here at the end of October, so I haven’t been swimming yet.”
“Oh.” I looked out the window again, wincing at how warm my face felt.
She opened the refrigerator. “Want something to drink? I have juice, seltzer…water?”
“No soda?” I scanned the large and airy room. The ceiling was so high!
“I don’t drink soda.” She made a face and took out a bottle of water. “I don’t have any booze, either—”
“Water is fine for me.” I sat on a barstool while she poured our drinks. “The only time I drink alcohol is Friday night at this bar called Bask’s for happy hour. And it’s usually beer.” I accepted the glass and clinked it to hers. “Cheers.”
She smiled. “To new friends.”
I lowered mine. “Is that what we are now?”
She drank almost half of hers while she stared at me, making my face warm again. “I’d like to be.”
Shirley Anne Edwards is a Northeast girl who first found her love for books when she read Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock Tower at thirteen. Shirley found her love for writing at a very young age, and since then has let her imagination run wild by creating quirky characters and vast worlds in her head.
Shirley lives in New Jersey and works in the entertainment industry in New York City.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain: “Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret ANYTHING that makes you smile.”
There aren’t enough bodies to harbor the demons of Olenore Allas.
One demon —a nameless and star-skinned creature—is plagued by the search for a perfect body, every day of their wispy life. Guided by nothing but the winds, they know they want nothing more than to be themself: mortal, beautiful, and loved. And who better to grant them that, than Junovere Krauss? A thief, a witch, hungry for a perfect demon to strike a deal with, to create a bond that will grant her the magic she’s longed for all her life. And in exchange, Juno promises her demon everything. A name, a voice, sight, hearing…and, of course, beauty.
The vain creature fights their devouring insecurities as Juno guards her secrets: that she needs this completed demon for her aunt, who has threatened to destroy her reputation before it’s even started. Complete the demon’s body, and their deal is complete, their bond broken. But Juno loses her magic forever. As Juno’s bond with her demon manifests into something more powerful than magic itself, she has to choose: magic, or freedom? Follow the demon and witch as they adventure over the bewitching Olenore Allas, a land that thrives on the law of balance. As they outsmart mortals, demons, and witches alike, they may slowly understand how willing they are to break the laws of balance for one another.
A dark fairytale rich with romance and a diverse cast that dives into the meaning of identity, and the relationship between a body and a soul, THE LANGUAGE OF THE WIND is the first installment of the BROKEN CHIMERA duology.
Juno was holding a sheet to her body. With her garments ruined, it was nothing but bottoms, the bunched sheet, and Wendarck’s intoxication keeping her from being completely bare.
“If you vomit on this bed,” Juno threatened, her ears twitching with ferocity, “I swear on every soul that I will push you directly to the floor and make you scrub it clean. I don’t care how bad your head is throbbing. You will clean it in the morning.”
Wendarck laughed. Juno was certainly not joking.
She sauntered to the edge of the bed, pulling the leathers in her hair free. Prickles of relief spread along her scalp. Wendarck, drunk as they were, was hauntingly focused on her. The sheets were thin, and Juno was certain they could see the shape of her body, every full curve and line in perfect silhouette. With no dress, her dappled skin was in view, dimpled and streaked. Glossy parallel marks hitched up her thighs and stomach, and Juno couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder to find the stolen scars along Wendarck’s abdomen.
“I won’t,” they promised. They bit their lip, moving to make room. Juno hummed and sunk into the bed. Wendarck groaned. “Don’t—don’t move so much. The world is swaying and I’ll be sick again.” Juno rolled her eyes, ignoring them so that she could adjust the sheets properly over her breasts.
“And to think, you could have had a bed all to yourself if only you had been more careful,” Juno retorted. “Now look. You’re with your witch cleaning up you and your — ” she gestured to their chest.
“I think it’s sweet. You look after me.”
“You’ll think differently in the morning.”
“Mm. I don’t do it often enough, then.”
Juno’s voice was a dare. “Do what?”
“Tell you how grateful I am.”
Silence. Juno shifted, and Wendarck sighed.
“Then tell me in the morning.”
Two heartless creatures. A witch, someone never meant to have a heart. And a demon, still searching for theirs. They both fell asleep, the haziness of mortality fading into their dreams.
M.R. Grand is the author of The Language of the Wind, her first novel (that she actually finished.) She grew up on classic DreamWorks, barbie films, and a lot of comics. With those being her foundation, she wanted nothing more than to make stories and art that took people to places where fairytales felt real. She currently lives somewhere in the mountains as a full-time creator. You can find her on Instagram @emargrand and hopefully other places soon. She’s not very good at the whole website thing yet.
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