Violet Dawn- Prologue Sneak Peek

Violet Dawn

Prologue Sneak Peek

PROLOGUE

KAIRI

I stand amongst the lavender, staring up at the emotional toil of the stormy sky.

The clouds pulsate like a beating heart, the surface tension of each gunmetal grey plume threatening to burst and shed its salted tears down over the thirsty summer soil of Hickory Oaks.

The cotton of my violet nightgown flutters around my bare ankles, the soles of my feet prickled by grass dry with the season and gold like the sun. My irises narrow to violet discs spinning around the orbit of my dark pupils, as I take in the sky, endless and incomparable to anything manmade, utterly sublime.

I draw in a deep breath, and then it strikes, vibrating up through my soles and rocking the core marrow of my bones. The thunderous rumble causes the surrounding field of lavender to tremble, undulating like a violet wave as a stiff breeze picks up and goosepimples rise to attention along the length of my bare arms.

My hair is swept back from my face, my fear pique-ing as I reach up instinctually to hide the new Fae points of the extremity, only to find them smooth and round, undeniably mortal.

I turn back, finding the silhouette of my wings have vanished, leaving only an uninterrupted view of the fiery horizon behind me where the sooty outlines of galloping horses speed in onyx hues, untamed and unstoppable.

I reach to my shoulder blade, feeling the smooth skin beneath my fingertips and shudder… the sky looming overhead in increasingly insidious shades of charcoal mapped through with sharp obsidian edges.

A crack splits the air like a whip hitting solid ice in the valleys of Drakos Vale, startling me, the blinding light causing my heart to stutter in my chest.

Aro.

My mouth goes arid, and I waste no more time, turning on the ball of my foot despite the burn of dry grass beneath, taking flight in the only way I know how.

The lavender rushes past me, the once soft looking blooms slashing against the bare skin of my legs and feet. The air tastes like electricity, the tang of citrus and iron tangible upon my tongue as I suck in air. It doesn’t seem enough as I make my way through the seemingly endless field of purple, the farmhouse an empty beacon of shadow against the horizon.

The lightning cracks again, cleaving the world in two, my heart rumbling like the thunder I know that will soon follow, feet racing faster and faster as underbrush skins the soles of my feet bloody.

His black eyes, those monstrously beauteous jet wings outstretched and ready to soar overhead, circling.

I can see it.

See him.

His lips twisted cruel and soul blacker than I had ever expected.

My spine aches where once he had cut her wings from her silken skin, from where he had assumed to make her his and his alone.

He had tried to cage me too, and yet… I continue to evade him.

Running, sprinting, panting, I carry on like this, fixing my eyes on the farmhouse, the only seemingly safe destination in view.

But, as I run harder, breathe deeper, I realise I’m getting no closer.

The field of lavender grows, expanding outwards like it’s a single moment that’s been stretched out through a wrangle, wrung of every ounce of fear.

The world illuminates and dims again with another lightning strike, and I realise that I cannot escape.

Stopping, my breath coming as ragged phantasmal wisps that flit from my lips and disappear into the dark of the sky overhead, I dare to look back.

Then I stop, my racing heart stalling abruptly as I inhale and hold the breath captive, eyes widening.

I straighten, then turn fully to face my pursuer.

“There is no escape from me,” she says, her voice an English echo of what mine has become, her face a pristine mirror image of my own.

Storm.

I stand before her, seeing her wings outstretched on either side, glorious and glistening with aether. Her pearlescent gown is embroidered with fiery irises, decadent jewellery adorning her neck, wrists and earlobes. The light catches within the dangling stone facets, blinding me completely.

As I shield my eyes, the lightning cracks behind her and thunder strums the air around us hard and deep like the strings of a bass.

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” I pant, straightening and swallowing down my fear.

Above, the sky breaks in two, sunlight and rain showering down upon what had only moments before been shrouded in ominous potential.

Her lustrous hair catches the beams, setting it alight in an otherworldly explosion of pure gold, a halo forming around her silhouette instead of a shadow.

I stare up at her, trembling, as rain begins to patter down around me.

It leaves her untouched, but hits my skin in large chill plops, causing me to shudder.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, feeling as meek as I sound.

She doesn’t smile, her lilac pupils locking with my own and creating a momentary connection so intense I feel it in my soul. The breeze builds around her, ruffling her feathers, and yet the rain still leaves her be as I begin to feel the damp seeping into my bones.

“I want you to remember who you are,” she says simply, echoing Hera’s only too recent words back at me.

I wilt then, and as the heavens tip over with cold water, I stand amongst the droplets and lavender.

With each and every raindrop upon my skin, I feel myself fade a little more.

Eventually, as I am slowly soaked through, I become but the ghost of a memory.

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Enjoy this?

Check out book One- Indigo Dusk!

When Kairi Freemont happens upon a winged man on her parents’ Tennessee Ranch, she’s given what she’s wanted ever since the day she was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: An escape from the pain of her chronic, invisible illness.

Through the power of the Aetherial Sun, Aro shows her there’s not only a place where her pain disappears but that she can live in a fairytale world of Unicorns, Fae, and magic she’s always wished was real. But when Kairi discovers that meeting Aro was no accident, that she may have lived a whole past life at Aro’s side before being stolen away by the monstrous Draconians, things start to spin out of control.

Are the Draconians, a race of banished dragon riders who have long since lost their precious reptilian steeds, as monstrous as the rest of Aetheria believes? And what lies at the heart of Aro’s motivation behind sweeping Kairi off her feet? Is it simply flirtation and his desire to give her a better life, or is the truth far more malicious than she could have ever expected?

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