Today Everly Frost and Month9Books are
revealing the cover and first chapter for FEAR MY MORTALITY, which releases April
5, 2016! Check out the gorgeous cover and enter to be one of the first readers
to receive a eGalley!!
A quick note from the author:
Hi there! I’m so excited to share this cover with you. I love the dark, intense colors and the girl who shows the determination, heart, and resilience that my main character needs to survive in her world. (Do you see the gold scorpion? Keep an eye out for that in the book.) Thanks so much for stopping by!
On to the reveal!
Title: FEAR MY MORTALITY
Author: Everly Frost
Pub. Date: April 5, 2016
Publisher: Month9Books
Format: Paperback & eBook
In a world where people are invulnerable
to illness and death, with lives spanning hundreds of years, a sixteen-year-old
becomes witness to the impossible – her brother’s failure to regenerate after
death after which she suspects that she too may be mortal.
Exclusive Excerpt
But
Eve turned from the serpent
and
did not eat of the fruit.
And
for her obedience,
she
was allowed to reach out her hand,
take
from the tree of life and eat,
and
live forever.
Evereach
Origins, Second Edition
Chapter
One
I never could watch anyone die.
Tricycle wheels flipped through the air. Brakes shrieked and
metal crunched. The kid’s trike rattled all the way across the road and hit my
foot. I froze at the curb in front of my house, school bag sliding off my
shoulder, vision filled with the spinning wheels. I told myself to walk away,
pretend I hadn’t heard the smash or seen the boy go under the vehicle. I should
shrug it off, like I was supposed to.
I should ignore the impulse to help.
I bounded around the broken bike and sprinted to the car in
the middle of the road. A little arm extended from underneath the front fender,
palm up, motionless. Biting my lip, I sank to my heels, wishing his fingers
would twitch, fighting the tears that welled behind my eyes.
First death.
The silence was heavy after the squeal and crash. I hovered,
not sure if I should pull him out. I hated my brother for leaving me behind. If
Josh had driven me to dance class like he was supposed to, I wouldn’t be here
now, staring at first death and not knowing what to do. I’d be going about my
day like normal. No, I reminded myself. Today was not an ordinary day. Today
was Implosion.
The driver emerged from the car with annoyance on her face. I
flinched as she slammed the car door. Another woman ran from a nearby house,
screaming into a phone. She raced to the driver and gave her a shove. “That’s
my son! I’m calling the Hazard Police. You’d better be insured!”
The driver threw up her hands and backed off, slumping against
the side of her car, clicking her fingernails together, and tapping her heels
against the pavement.
I knelt down to the boy as his mother continued to yell into
the phone. She paced up and down the road, her voice shrill. “How long will it
take to get a recovery dome here? What—you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m already
late for work.”
Wisps of his blond hair touched the side of the wheel like
yellow cotton candy, all floating and soft. I wondered if his soul floated
there too, inches above the hot road, waiting to get back to his body. I was
glad I couldn’t see the rest of his head.
Before I touched him, something zipped past my shoulder.
The drone circled up and back, swinging close to my ear.
Shaped like a metal cross no bigger than my hand, it skimmed the air in front
of the car. Beneath the hum of its four miniature rotor blades came the chatter
of shutters. It was taking shots of the damage: the boy’s hand, the wheel, a
piece of tricycle jammed under there with him. Assessing the situation and
relaying the information twenty miles west to the nearest Hazard Police
station.
The information drone flitted from spot to spot, whirring
around the car straight toward the driver, hovering and clicking, transmitting
her image back to the police. The kid’s mother was next, before the drone flew
to me. A pinprick of light struck my eyes, and I stopped still, waiting for it
to take the shot and move on, but the clicking stopped.
I frowned as the mechanical chattering died. Instead of taking
my picture, the drone floated, paused for the first time. I stared back at it,
waiting, a feeling of unease spreading through my chest.
Someone grabbed my arm.
My elderly neighbor, Mrs. Hubert, wrenched me to my feet, a
pair of pruning shears wavering in her other hand. The camera clicked behind
me—just once—and I imagined the blur of my body captured in the image. Before I
drew breath, Mrs. Hubert’s strong grip propelled me several feet from the car.
Her long braid—a sign of her age—slapped against her thigh as she strode away
from the accident, taking me with her.
“Come away, Ava. You don’t need to get caught up in that.” She
flicked her head in the direction of the scowling driver who looked like she
wanted to strangle someone. I guessed she didn’t have insurance, after all.
“But, he’s still under there … ” I threw a confused look at
the boy’s mother. She still hadn’t checked him.
“Everyone deals with first death differently. You need to get
used to it, if you want to get through Implosion tonight.”
Implosion.
When I get to see the color of my own blood.
She tugged on my arm again. “Besides, the Hazard Police will
be here soon. They’ll take care of him.”
Behind us, the info drone returned to the crash as Mrs. Hubert
urged me further away from the accident. I picked up my bag and tried to forget
about the child. I guessed it would be at least half an hour before he
regenerated and was fully conscious again—faster if the Hazards brought a
recovery dome.
Mrs. Hubert opened her gate and went back to pruning her rose
bushes like nothing had happened. The shears snapped. Petals floated to newly
mulched earth, bright red on brown. “Go on. There’s nothing more to do here.”
I forced myself to focus. If I didn’t hurry, I’d miss dance
class completely.
It took me twenty minutes to rush to the dance studio
downtown, which made me ten minutes late. Dance was part of my schooling and
counted as the first two classes of my day. Luckily, the studio was located
just a few blocks up from the school. As I puffed toward the café below the studio,
I slowed for a moment to breathe in the normality of people drinking coffee,
the crackle of open newspapers, and the soft jumble of conversation. No more
broken bike and tiny hand.
Approaching the corner of the building, I gave Lucy, the owner
of the café, a quick wave. She’d offered me a waitressing job over summer
holidays, which was perfect because I could head upstairs to dance practice
after my shift. She returned the wave with a bright smile. With her olive skin
and dark brown hair, Lucy had the kind
of complexion that hinted at what some people called an ‘unfortunate’
Seversandian heritage. Not that my own features were far off: brown hair, brown
eyes, and skin that was a shade darker than pale. A very long time ago, there
was free movement between our country, Evereach, and the country across the
sea, Seversand, but not anymore.
I took the stairs two at a time, raced past the poster I
normally drooled over—an ad for the Conservatorium, the most prestigious dance
academy in all of Evereach—and launched myself through the door.
Inside the studio, students were moving away from the warm-up
bar into the center of the room. Ms. White towered at the head of the dance
floor, her reflection tall and straight in the mirror behind her. “Hurry up,
class! Selections for the Conservatorium are only six months away and I won’t
accept dawdling because summer’s here.”
I ran to put my bag down, searching the group for my best
friend, Hannah. I caught sight of her pale blond head among the other students,
shining like the first ray of sunlight that morning. She threw me a questioning
look as Ms. White pointed me to the warm up bar. I rushed through my stretches
and positioned myself at the back of the room, focusing on the new routine,
until Hannah maneuvered her way over to me.
“Where were you?”
“There was a car accident. One of my neighbor’s kids got hit.”
Her eyes glazed over. The boy’s death wouldn’t matter to her.
It shouldn’t matter to me.
“And Josh hates me, but what’s new.” I leaped, twisting my
body mid-air and landing on my feet, to spring upward again.
Hannah dipped away, and when she moved back, she edged closer
so we could talk. “Are you ready for Implosion tonight? My Mom was all mushy
about it this morning, it was embarrassing.”
I forced a laugh. “Yeah, my parents not so much.” Mom had
taken me shopping for a new dress in all black so it didn’t show the blood.
Black wasn’t compulsory and Josh had told me that some kids at his Implosion
ceremony the previous year wore white, but those were mostly the religious
kids, and they framed their Implosion clothes afterward to remind themselves
about faith. I only had Josh’s word for it, since only adult members of the
family were allowed to attend the ceremony and it wasn’t televised. Other than
the dress shopping, my parents hadn’t talked about Implosion much, like it
wasn’t important that I was becoming an adult.
After tonight, I’d be allowed to grow my hair past my
shoulders—but only about half an inch, since the length of our hair had to
match our age. And I’d be allowed to drink. And move out of home, except only
the really fast healers did that since they were offered paid Hazard training
while they completed their last year of school. I figured I’d be stuck at home
for the next year, but Josh was heading to college after summer holidays.
“So, what about Josh? He’s going to the Terminal tonight? I
heard it’s going to be a massive fight.”
My stomach clenched and I missed the move Ms. White was
demonstrating. Josh had begged to go to his graduation party, but our parents
insisted he come to Implosion with me. “Dad said no.”
“But all the graduates are going. It’s the last time they’ll
get to kill each other.” The lightness was gone from her voice. “He has to be there.”
I shrugged, but the nonchalant gesture was a lie. How could I
tell her that the very idea of the Terminal made me sick? That my heart hurt
every time I remembered the little boy under the car. That the thought of
Implosion—of being killed—made me shudder so hard I couldn’t breathe. Hannah
hadn’t died before either, but I knew she didn’t feel the same way.
I said none of those things as Ms. White’s voice drowned out
my thoughts, beating out a warning with a finger pointed firmly in my
direction. “Concentrate, Miss Holland. Or I’ll have to send you to school
without your Extra-Curricular Pass.”
Hannah flicked me a quick, apologetic glance and I ducked my
head and willed my body to obey the music, to turn when it should and leap when
it should. Finally, I lost myself in rhythm and movement and the quiet that always
fell over me when I danced.
When we arrived at school, it was morning break and students
crowded the halls. I pushed on the doors just in time for someone to release a
wash of red flyers advertising the Terminal.
A familiar giggle told me that Sarah Watson posed against the
nearby wall. Her nail scissors glinted as she tilted her bleeding ear, showing
off how her blood didn’t even drip before her skin healed.
Fast
healer.
I rolled my eyes and turned away before the inevitable face
sucking with her latest conquest, but I was surprised when it was Michael
Bradley. He had Sarah hanging off his arm like she was an extension of his
elbow.
“Remember when we said we’d never be some guy’s accessory?”
Hannah grabbed my hand with her eyebrows way up in her hair. “That’s the one
guy I’d make an exception for. Do you know he’s never lost a fight at the
Terminal?”
Josh didn’t say how fast Michael healed at Implosion the
previous year, but I’d heard he turned down Hazard training. I guessed, if my
Dad were part owner of the Terminal, I wouldn’t bother with a job either.
Sarah caught my eye before
I could pretend to look somewhere else. “Hey, Ava,” she said, looking me up and
down from my regulation-length short ponytail to my leggings. “Been to dance
class? Seems like a waste of time to me.”
She turned away before I
could reply, but Michael gave me a nod, a strangely serious acknowledgement of
my presence, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. I frowned at him as Hannah
pulled me along. “Pfft. She’s just jealous. Besides, did you know she’s a third
child?”
“Truly?” When I turned twelve, Mom had given me ‘the talk.’ At
the end of it, she’d told me that our bodies were only designed to have one
child, maybe two, and that was a good thing given how long people lived. Otherwise
the world would be overpopulated.
Hannah drew me into the swarm of students. “Did you see how
fast she heals? She’s probably a
Basher.”
I glanced back at Sarah and Michael as they disappeared into
the milling students. Members of the Basher gang were always fast healers. There were images of them on the news, always slightly
blurry and concealed in full camouflage gear, and I’d heard stories about them,
whispers of espionage and subterfuge, talk of theft and threats, hatred of slow
healers, but they were always far away, somewhere else. They
went to extremes to keep their identities secret and nobody knew who their
leader was, but their message appeared in graffiti sprawled on the corners of
billboards or across the sides of buildings: Bury the weak.
“Do you think it’s true what they say about the Basher cells
underground?”
“That they bury slow healers alive.” She screwed up her face
in disgust. “The police seem to take it seriously, but I don’t know. Sounds
like a scary story.”
“I don’t understand why they hate people who don’t heal fast.”
I struggled to say the words ‘slow healer.’ It was insulting to label someone
that way.
Hannah shrugged. “I heard they think slow healers make us look
weak, vulnerable; everything we use Implosion to prove we aren’t.” She smiled
and bumped my shoulder, trying to lighten the mood. “Hey, if I turn out to be a
slow healer tonight, you’ve got my back, right?”
I attempted a smile as she pulled me down the hallway. Heading
to class, I checked the steady stream of students for my brother. School was
finishing early in honor of Implosion—I had only two classes left—and I didn’t
trust him to wait to give me a lift home.
As soon as the final bell rang, I raided my locker, hugged
Hannah, and raced out to the parking lot.
Josh was already opening the driver side door as I ran up.
“Hey.”
He didn’t answer, settling behind the wheel with his hair
blending into the cracked black leather seat. He pointed at me and then to the
passenger seat.
I raced around to the side and dropped into the seat, just as
his best friend, Aaron Reid, appeared, his red hair tousled and full of gel. He
drummed his fists on the hood of the car and shouted at Josh through the
windscreen. “See you at the Terminal, buddy!”
He signaled to Josh, put a finger to the underside of his
chin, and pretended to pull the trigger. Josh mocked a slit throat in return. A
ghost of a smile crept onto my brother’s face as he revved the engine and
slammed the car into reverse. Josh drove faster than the speed limit, but I
picked my battles.
I chose my words carefully. “Aaron seems to think you’re going
to the Terminal tonight.”
His jaw flexed and there were murky stains under his eyes that
made him look hollow. “So what if I am?”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t because I didn’t want him to
go to the Terminal—as much as I couldn’t stand the idea of people killing each
other with swords or guns or drones, or whatever new thrill the Terminal came
up with. I didn’t want him to miss his graduation party either. But he’d been
through Implosion before. He knew what was coming.
“Josh, it’s my Implosion. You’re my brother. I need … ”
I don’t
want to be alone when I die.
I swallowed the words I couldn’t say. I’d be surrounded by
hundreds of kids. My parents would be there. But, somehow, the thought of my
brother standing beside me gave me courage. Even if I regenerated straight
away. Even if there was a chance I was a fast healer, I didn’t want to lose
myself to that moment of darkness. That moment of death.
The words tumbled out of my mouth. “I need you to be there.”
He didn’t look at me, his
expression hooded and unreadable, as his hands tightened on the wheel. He was
quiet for so long that exasperation bubbled up inside me.
“How can playing at the Terminal be more important than my
first death?”
“Because I’d rather kill than watch you be killed.” He glared
at me as we stopped at an intersection, a deep darkness behind his eyes.
I struggled to understand. “Implosion’s important … ”
“You’re a freak, Ava. It’s a stupid ceremony that lets people
sleep at night. Seversand isn’t coming to kill us. Because we can’t die. Nobody
can.”
He tapped his temple and pressed his finger there, his eyes
boring holes into me. “The only war we fight is the one in here.”
I struggled against the burn of tears behind my eyes. At
school, we’d learned about the old world war that began when Seversand attacked
Evereach and was fought over control of Evereach’s rich soil and water
supplies. It lasted a hundred years while both countries raced to create a
nuclear bomb. In the end, when Seversand dropped the bomb on Dell city—the city
where I now lived—it didn’t kill anybody. After that, they drew up an
international treaty: as long as each country’s children regenerated at
Implosion each year, no country would try to conquer another again. There was
no point in wasting resources on a war that couldn’t be won.
But it wasn’t the past that bothered me. It was the look in my
brother’s eyes. I’d practically said aloud that I was scared to die and now he
knew my deepest fear.
I didn’t understand why I
felt this way, why death bothered me so much.
Why am I like this?
It was a question I’d
asked myself a thousand times and I still didn’t have any answers. All I knew
for sure was that I was alone. Alone and different. I couldn’t stand to see the
pity in Josh’s expression. I slumped in the seat for the rest of the trip,
until we pulled into the driveway.
Josh was out of the car before I had time to gather my things.
I dragged myself toward the front door as the local neighborhood-watch drone
coasted by the house. There was
a happy shout behind me and the little boy pedaled past on a shiny, new
tricycle, his fine hair puffed up and wafting as he picked up speed. His mom
gave me a wave. I tried to smile as I headed inside, down the corridor, past
the connecting door to the garage, and around the corner to the bottom of the
stairs.
Mom was sitting at the computer, visible through the open door
opposite the stairwell. She jumped out of her seat as soon as she saw me.
“Ava?”
I was already part way up the stairs. “Yeah?”
“Get ready, sweetie. We’ll have a bite to eat and then we’ll
go.”
I dragged myself to the landing halfway up, pausing as the air
screen in Mom’s study blared after me, the excitement in the female
newsreader’s voice palpable.
“Sixteen-year-olds all around Evereach are preparing for
Implosion tonight. At exactly 6:00 p.m. in each time zone, young people of
every nation have proven their ability to regenerate, including teens in
Seversand.” A hint of derision crept into the newsreader’s voice as she
mentioned Seversand, but she continued without pause. “In other news, Starsgard
has refused to extradite the computer hacker known as Arachne … ”
Starsgard.
It
was the only country that didn’t take part in the world war or Implosion and
its borders were heavily-protected. On a map, the three countries reminded me
of a set of lungs. Evereach and Seversand formed the lungs on either side, a
wide sea between them, but they were joined at the top by a backbone of
impassable mountains. Starsgard was
those mountains.
The newsreader’s voice faded as I made it to the top of the
stairs, turned left, and headed to my room, passing Josh’s closed door on the
way. Farther down the hall was the upstairs lounge. I wanted to run through it
to the deck beyond, push the sliding doors open, and gulp fresh air. Instead, I
turned into my room where I found the black dress, pressed and clean, lying on
my bed next to a pair of dark stockings. Shiny black heels waited on the floor.
Next door, Mrs. Hubert’s lights weren’t on. Normally, her
flickering television turned my bedroom into a disco, a kaleidoscope of moving
lights. I peered out to see that her blinds were drawn and shuttered, and at
the side of her house the garbage can was overturned, spilling white plastic
bags across the side path. I frowned as I headed to the bathroom across the
hall to wash up.
Too soon, I was dressed and ready and Mom was calling. “Ava?
Josh? Time to go.”
Dad met me at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in a new black
suit and Mom in a dress similar to mine. Dad held out his hands for me.
I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted. “I don’t feel like
eating.”
“That’s okay, honey, let’s just go. There’s been a change of
venue, so we have further to travel.”
I followed Mom and Dad to the car and seconds later Josh
thumped down the stairs behind us. Climbing into the car, I tried not to crush
my dress, smoothing it out in my lap.
Dad spoke to the navigation system and the serene female voice
confirmed: The Terminal. I started,
glanced at Josh, and he smirked back at me.
As the car passed the darkness shrouding our neighbor’s house,
I said, “Mrs. Hubert’s place is dark tonight. Is she out?”
In the front seat, Mom tilted toward me. “I’m sorry, sweetie.
Mrs. Hubert had her final death today.”
I stared at the window, frowning at my own reflection, as Mom
said, “We mustn’t be sad. She had a wonderful life. I’m sure all her
descendents will come to the wake.”
“She just didn’t seem that old. I mean, her hair was longer
than anybody’s, but … ” I remembered her braid slapping her thigh. Halfway down
the back meant fifty years old. To the waist was one hundred. To the top of the
thigh was two hundred and after that people stopped measuring as long as it
stayed long.
Dad said, “There isn’t always warning. Our bodies just stop
regenerating. She must have been at least 350 years old.”
Mom gave me a calming smile as the car continued out onto the
main street. “I’m sure we’ll be invited to the wake. Come on now, it’s time to
enjoy the evening.”
Thirty minutes later, the entertainment precinct glowed ahead.
Movie theaters, malls, and restaurants surrounded the massive Terminal
skyscraper like ants swarming around a dirt mound. Once there, we pulled into a
multi-level parking lot and followed the complicated neon signs to the
entrance. The glass walkway opened into what looked like a living room, lined
with plush leather couches and fine wooden coffee tables. A security camera
drone floated in each corner of the room and on the opposite side, a big
mahogany door advertised the entrance, with a touch screen in the middle.
There was a short line, with other people dressed like us, all
in black. Mom tapped in a code and tugged me through with Dad and Josh close
behind. Moving across a walkway, we entered an enormous, dimly-lit room, with
people already milling about—500 kids and their parents—all of the
sixteen-year-olds in Dell city. The room was flat across the floor, but the
sides curved up and over like a dome around us.
Surveillance drones hummed
across the ceiling, recording what was happening for the eyes only of each
country’s highest authorities: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and monarchs.
Somewhere in the heart of Evereach, President Scott would be watching, flanked
by the Head of the Hazards and the High Justice. The Seversandian President
would be watching too. I’d seen pictures of her, standing at the head of an
army amassed across shimmering sand dunes, her dark brown hair tied into
a high ponytail and a row of jewels strung across her cheek from a ring in the
side of her nose.
To one side of the room, a group of kids stood praying, heads
bowed, all wearing identical white cloaks that made them stand out like
glow-in-the-dark figurines. I wished I could see the world the way they
did—that our fate was decided by a woman in a garden who told a serpent to get
lost and was rewarded for her faith with eternal life. Implosion for the faith
community was a part of remembering and giving thanks. But the drones hummed
and the room was like a crypt and it was impossible to think about new
beginnings when the whole world waited for us to die.
“Hey, buddy!” Josh’s friend, Aaron, appeared out of nowhere,
fist thumping with my brother.
Dad looked surprised. “Aaron, I didn’t know you had a sibling
here tonight.”
Aaron pointed over his shoulder and I noticed for the first
time the Hazard officers standing at intervals around the room. They were
covered from neck to foot in fitted green uniform, designed to allow them to
move fast. Each wore a pair of drone-control visors, so transparent I could
barely see them from that distance.
The man Aaron pointed to had the same color red hair as Aaron
and a drone hovering at his shoulder. “My brother’s with the Hazards, so I got
to help set up.”
As Aaron spoke, his brother’s drone drifted toward us, and mom
wasn’t the only one pointing at it. “That’s new.”
Smooth and sleek, the drone was striped gold and black and was
bigger than any I’d seen before. Silver protrusions dotted its underbelly,
tranquilizer darts masquerading as decorative studs. Its movements were calm,
wafting close to the ceiling.
Aaron’s response was indifferent. “It’s a wasp.”
I’d heard about them on the news. They were Weapons to
Apprehend Suspect Persons—the latest police response to the Bashers. This one
was the same black and gold as the other wasps, but it had narrow stripes all
around its body, and I realized that each wasp was decorated differently.
Aaron winked at me. “I’ll be taking off now.” He shook my
father’s hand. “Have a good evening, Mr. Holland. Mrs. Holland.” A quick glance
at Josh and Aaron was gone.
My skin prickled as Mom and Dad gave me a gentle push forward.
Other kids were separating from their families and moving into the center of
the room. Somehow, I ended up close to the front as we formed rows in rough
arrow shapes across the floor. I hadn’t even had the chance to look for Hannah.
What was already dim lighting darkened so I could barely see.
I looked back for my family, frowning as Josh slid away from
my parents, carefully angling his way toward the back of the room. He was
taking his chance to leave and part of me sank to the floor. He could have
stayed just this once.
The lights went off and the sudden silence crashed over me.
I flinched as sound boomed around the curved walls, an
explosion in the air. A giant, orange mushroom billowed up around us: an air
screen of projected images engulfing us in pictures of an inferno, as though
we’d been dropped into the heart of a fireball. I gasped as the shape of the
first exploding nuclear bomb splashed color across the height of the walls,
swelling around us, a reminder to the world’s authorities that it was our city
on which the bomb had fallen hundreds of years ago.
The image of a woman appeared in front of me, kneeling inside
the flames, her body cracking and roiling, separating and pulling together,
trembling as she resisted the force of the explosion around her. I shuddered at
the realization that I was looking at real footage of the day the bomb
exploded.
The woman opened her eyes as words etched the air around us.
We are
Evereach. We are invincible.
She struggled to her feet, her voice a whisper that may as
well have been a shout. “We aren’t dead. You didn’t hurt us.” Her braid swished
around her body, flicking into the air under a force that I could only imagine,
lit up by flame and heat.
She reached to the ground and for the first time I noticed
there was someone at her feet: a teenage girl, her eyes big and dark, fissions
forming across her skin and healing all at once like her body was a jigsaw
puzzle fighting to stay whole.
The woman’s voice rose. She threw back her head and shouted
into the air, shouting at Seversand and all the countries allied with it. “Look
at us! Our children are alive. You cannot hurt us!”
She grit her teeth against flame and heat. There was an echo
of her words as others appeared, others who’d fallen. They clambered to their
feet and joined in her shout against the wind and fire, the dust of exploded
buildings, shards of glass and wood whirling around them.
The people of Evereach roared. “Our children do not die.”
Suddenly, my parents were beside me, each of them holding one
of my wrists. I tried to pull away from them, and they shot me alarmed looks.
Nobody else was trying to run. Nobody else was afraid.
They each held a knife in one hand, gripped one of my wrists
in the other, pulling me close. I tried to wrench myself away from them, but
the image of the woman and her daughter ghosted through me, leaving me cold and
frozen. Above us, the drones swarmed, buzzing like a thousand insects,
capturing the flash of steel, exposed skin, determined eyes.
When I died, I’d find out whether my soul floated or whether
it left me or whether there was no such thing as a soul at all. I tried to take
deep breaths, tried to stop shaking. We were strong, and we had to show the
world that we could never be broken.
The woman’s voice whispered into the silent dark. “You will
never defeat us, for our children do not die.”
Blades bit my wrists.
Everly Frost is a writer. If she doesn’t
have her laptop handy, then she has a pen and paper stashed nearby. She writes
young adult and middle grade fiction set in worlds like ours with unexpected
differences. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.
Her debut YA fantasy FEAR MY MORTALITY is coming in early 2016!
For updates on FEAR MY MORTALITY and the Mortal Eternity Series, and more, please follow Everly on Facebook and on Twitter.
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Giveaway Details:
1 winner will receive the FIRST eGalley
of FEAR MY MORTALITY. International.
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