Have you read these stories yet? Set in the realm of STAR TOUCHED QUEEN, these three stories share pieces of amazing storytelling waiting to be read. Read the first little bit of DEATH AND NIGHT and see if you aren't immediately hooked and want, no need, to pick up this book and read it.
EXCERPT:
stood outside the home, watching as the light beaded and dripped down the length of the Tapestry
thread. I waited. There was never any rush. Not for me at least.
The light dangled
from the end of the string, clinging and re- luctant. A passing
wind stirred the
ends of the
thread, teasing out strands of memory. The memories plumed into the air, releasing the scent of a life lived in love. One by one, the memories unraveled—
a pillow shared by two heads bent close in secrecy,
a frayed blanket kept inside an eternally empty cradle, a table that sagged from the weight of uncertain
feasts. Happiness stolen from the edges of sorrow.
I stepped over the threshold.
The lights in the hut extinguished. Shadows slipped off the walls to gather around my feet. Inside the hut, someone had propped up a stingy fire. Cinnamon scented the air. Past the dusty vestibule, rows
upon rows of bay leaves hung from the ceiling. Strange runes scratched into small animal bones and ivory hairpins lay in carefully constructed patterns. I laughed. Someone had tried to ward me away. But there was
no door that
didn’t open to me.
At the far corner of the house huddled two
people. A man in the arms of a woman. Old age had blessed him, yet for all his
gnarled veins and silver-streaked hair, the woman
cradled him as if he were a child. He murmured softly
into the crook of her neck. I watched them. She wasn’t crying.
The woman looked up . . . and saw me. How refreshing.
“Greetings, Dharma Raja,” said
the woman in a clear
voice.
I took in the bay leaves and bone pins.
“You were expecting me, I take it.”
“Yes,” she said, hanging her
head. “I regret that
I cannot serve you any food or drink or treat you as a guest in our home.”
“Don’t let it trouble you,” I said, waving
my hand. “I am rarely a guest. Merely an inevitable occurrence.”
Her husband did not stir in her arms. His breath had grown soft. While the woman had kept her eyes trained on me, I had taken away his pain, siphoned it bit by bit. I was in a generous
mood.
“You have come for him.”
“As
I will for you, one day. I could tell you the hour, if you wish it.”
“No.”
I shrugged. “Very well.”
She clutched him tighter. Her hands trembled. I knew she could feel his life unspooling. She may have seen me, but she did not see his life pooling
beneath him.
“May I ask something of you, Dharma Raja?” “You may.”
But I need not honor it.
“We always wished to leave this life together.”
“I cannot change
your appointed time,
even if I wished.”
She closed her eyes. “Then may I request, instead, that you not let him pass
to the next life until I may join him there?”
Now this was interesting. I sank backward into the air, and an onyx throne swirled up to meet me. I tilted
my head, watching her. “Why? I haven’t weighed your life yet. What if you were far more honorable than your husband in this
life? I could pour your soul into the
mold of a princess blessed with beauty and intellect, riches and wonders. I could add silver to your heart and fortify you from any
heartbreak. I could give you a life worthy of legends.” She shook her
head. “I would rather
have him.”
“You’d rather have him, and
whatever life that
entails?” I leaned forward, eyeing the dingy room.
Her eyes flashed. “Yes.”
“He may not even come back as a human. Believe me. I’ve remade emperors into cockroaches and cockroaches into kings. You seem like a reasonably intelligent woman. Would you truly like to keep house for a bug?”
She lifted her chin. “I would be his mate in any form.”
A curious emotion prickled my skin, nudging the back of my thoughts. My hands tightened on the shadow throne. Before I could stop myself, the question flew
from me:
“Why? ”
“Because I love him,” said the woman. “I would prefer any life with him than any life without him.
Even the deities
know love to
the point that they
will chase their
counterpart through thousands of lifetimes. Surely you, oh Dharma Raja, understand how extraor- dinary love can be?”
I knew
very well what could come of love. I had seen it. Been cursed by it. Even now, I thought of her. The way she ran away and left a shadow in her place.
Love was extraordinary.
Extraordinarily spiteful. Extraordinarily blind. Extraordinarily misleading. “Bold
words,” I said.
“They do not move you?”
I shrugged.
“You may appeal and
supplicate and wheedle as you wish, but I have
heard every excuse and plea and sputter, and my heart has never been moved.”
The woman bowed her head.
She gathered her husband to her chest. Her wedding bangles
clanked together, breaking the silence. When
I left, custom
dictated that she must remove those wedding ornaments. Widows did not wear such bracelets. I had not consid- ered until
now that the sound itself was a thing near death. And that chime—gold against gold—struck me far louder than any keening. In the echoes, I heard something hollow. And lonely.
I dropped the noose. It slid through the man’s skin, noiseless as silk. Life had
left him. All that
was left was his soul.
You
never forget what it’s like to withdraw a soul. It is an un- clasping. Sometimes a soul is tough and hard,
surrounded by sin- ews of memories gone brittle with age. Sometimes a soul is soft
and bursting like wind-fallen fruit,
all bruised tenderness and stale hope. And sometimes a soul is an ethereal shard of light.
As if the force of its life is a scorching thing.
This soul
belonged to light.
When the woman looked down, she knew
that her husband was gone. The thing she cradled
was nothing more than meat soon to spoil. Tears slid down her wrinkled cheeks.
“Come now,” I said, standing from the throne. “I have taken
hus- bands
when their wives still wore the henna from
their wedding. I consider you lucky.”
“I beg of you,” she said. “Don’t let him move on without me. He would have asked
the same.”
I swung the soul into a satchel and
the light faded.
I headed for the door, more out of formality than anything else.
If
I wanted, I could’ve disappeared right then and there.
“Please. What would you do for someone you loved?”
I stopped short. “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of that provo- cation.”
“You love no one?” she asked, her eyebrows rising in disbelief. “I love myself. Does that count?”
And then I left.
