Realms Of Ancient Collection , livre ebook

Ecw Press - M. Beiko S.

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704 pages

English

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Discover the intricately plotted, action-packed, animal-based fantasy series that New York Times #1 bestselling author KELLY ARMSTRONG calls A thrilling tale. Scion of the Fox: The Realms of Ancient, Book 1 Roan Harken considers herself a typical high school student dead parents, an infected eyeball, and living in the house of her estranged, currently comatose grandmother (well, maybe not so typical) but she s uncovering the depth of the secrets her family left behind. Saved from the grasp of Death itself by a powerful fox spirit named Sil, Roan must harness mysterious ancient power and quickly. Zabor lies in wait in the bed of the frozen Assiniboine River, a snake-monster hungry for the sacrifice of spirit-blood in exchange for keeping the flood waters at bay. Thrust onto an ancient battlefield, Roan soon realizes that to maintain the balance of the world, she will have to sacrifice more than her life in order to take her pla

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Children's

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	24 septembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773054308
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0550€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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The Realms of Ancient Collection
Scion of the Fox The Children of the Bloodlands The Brilliant Dark
S.M. BEIKO

Contents
— BOOK I — Scion of the Fox
— BOOK II — Children of the Bloodlands
— BOOK III — The Brilliant Dark
About the Author

Scion of the Fox
The Realms of Ancient, Book I
S.M. BEIKO

To any young person who has ever felt powerless. There is only one of you in this entire world. That is your superpower. You brighten the world by being in it.

Contents
Part I: Ember
The Stone Fox
The Sigil of the Moth Queen
The Five Families
Part II: Spark
The Council of the Owls
The Severed Rabbit
A Crown of Horns
Part III: Flame
The Owl’s Offer
The Ember Dance
The Broken Tenet
The Sleeping Jaws
Part IV: Inferno
The Hunter-Child’s Secret
The First Rabbit
The Bloodgate
Part V: Ash
The Gardener and the Targe
Red River Rising
The Dragon Opal
Flight
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright

It was snowing — no real shocker in February. Plows and salt trucks couldn’t keep up, the snow disposal sites and the boulevards piling high. These were the Martian conditions we were used to in Winnipeg. No one batted an eye.
I rode my bike through the bad weather. It made me feel independent, stronger than I really was. People call winter cyclists crazy for good reason. I stood in the seat, tires gripping the fresh powder over the train tracks on Wellington Crescent. But I didn’t see her in time, and I lost control, twisted, and flew over my handlebars, joining her prone body in the road.
I couldn’t move, face to face with blank eyes and icy flesh. The girl was dead, yeah, but well preserved, the weather doing double duty as a morgue cooler. The frost had kept her pretty face safe, made her look carved out of ice and porcelain.
Stumbling to my feet, I struggled to move my numb hands. She’d made a snow angel before she died, wings scuffed around her broken arms, crooked legs frozen mid-dance. Her mouth was open in a hollow scream.
This was the first dead body I’d ever seen. I hadn’t even seen my parents’ bodies after the accident, so it felt as though this one belonged to me. Her hair was red. Her knees were knobby. And her eye had been gouged out — we could almost pass for sisters. Even though it was a horrible thing to see — like looking into a death mirror — I knew this body was meant for me to find.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything. I should have, because reacting in the slightest way would’ve eked me out as “a stable human.” But let’s face it — I was too far gone for that.
Before any cars could pull over to see what the lone girl by the train tracks was staring at, before the police and the ambulance and the news trucks could appear to wrap the girl in a cocoon of speculation and black plastic — before they found out it was my fault — all I could do was grab my bike and ride away until my legs were stone, trying not to think of all the things that were coming for me in broad daylight, or how my brain buzzed with two words: You’re next.

Part I Ember

The Stone Fox
Oh she’s so glamorous, she’s so cool, long legs that go to heaven and lips that tell me to get outta town. Pretty lady that won’t give me the time of day — she’s a stoooone FOX!
That song. The song my dad used to sing at my mom on the good and the bad days. It’s my only memory of my parents. I was too young when they died, became an orphan before any other memories could stick. But this one did.
My dad singing intentionally off-key, chasing Mom around the kitchen until she gave up being mad at him for whatever unspeakable thing hung between them, and then they’d kiss and make it better. I’d squeal and demand to be picked up, to be a part of their fun, and we’d hold each other until I fussed to be put down again. I felt their love like a fire. They loved me. I know they did. Even if it didn’t last.
My mother was a compact creature. Very hard to crack. Sometimes she would lock herself in my dad’s little greenhouse and go quiet for days. She would let only me in (though I don’t remember my father ever trying to get through to her), and I’d give her peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches that my sloppy preschool hands had made, hoping it would make her remember she had to love us. It was as hot as a sauna in there, even in winter, the warmth rolling off her in angry waves. I would find her in the back by the stuff Dad called belladonna , and she would be staring out through the glass, fixated on our big yard as if imprisoned.
She spoke like someone else was standing over her, and she’d say something like, “A darling little stone menagerie, with the power to kill and create.” Was it a fairy tale she was telling me? Was she even speaking to me at all?
I never asked. I should have.
Instead, I would put down the sandwich and jump to see over the table of plants and out at the little statue garden. Still in her trance, and without looking away, my mother would lift me as if I were a pebble in the palm of her hand.
Then I would wind my fingers in her seemingly infinite hair. “The fox is the prettiest, Mommy, the prettiest like you.”
She sighed and squeezed me so tight it hurt, but I didn’t ask her to stop.
Out in the garden, there was a pair of stone deer leaping. A stone owl midflight. A stone seal diving through a stone wave, a stone rabbit bolting, and, yes, a stone fox. It sat amongst them but apart from them, still and staring and quiet. The set had been a present from my grandma, my mother’s mother. There was no special occasion, but a truck had backed into our yard one day with men hired to move the statues into it.
I frolicked and cartwheeled that summer, feeling like it was Christmas in July. But my mother just stood there, still as a warrior waiting for the next onslaught.
Take it back , she’d scream over the phone to someone I never knew. I don’t want it anywhere near this family. My dad would try to calm her, but she’d only grow angrier. She’s telling me to just accept it. To let it happen for the greater good. I won’t! I won’t let them take her!
We ’ll find another way.
I wish I’d been old enough to ask. I wish they could have trusted me with their secrets.
The statues had been my grandmother’s and now they were ours. I never met my grandmother, or if I did, I don’t remember what she looked like. She went far, far away before I was born. Mom never talked about her, but I could tell she thought about her often; mouth set in a hard line, beryl eyes crystallized. She stared at the statues. She hated them. And was maybe afraid of them, too.
Once, I climbed up onto the deer, gripping its ears or antlers and pretending I was riding it. Like we were flying through a forest being chased by whatever evil thing pursues kids and ultimately fails to catch them. I saw my mother and scrambled off. I wasn’t allowed near them. I thought I was in trouble.
But she only folded her arms. She had accepted something I didn’t understand, and instead of disciplining me, she wondered aloud if I’d asked the deer permission to ride them. I felt suddenly guilty, as if the statues were real. I didn’t say anything. But she said that if I asked for something with true and honest intention, I’d always get what I needed. Then she left me alone.
I should have asked .
I didn’t ride the deer after that. When I looked at the statues closely, eternally jumping or flying or sprinting, I realized they were all running away from something. Except the fox. It gave off warmth. Sometimes when I sat very still, I could hear it whispering stories to me, tales of things I’d never understand.
Kid stuff. Imaginary friend complex.
Back in the greenhouse, my mother would stare into the dark whirlpool in her head that I couldn’t see, saying nothing for a long time. But she wouldn’t move from that spot. For hours, for ages. But I’d keep by her, until I fell asleep. I’d wake up in my bed the next day, like it was all a dream.
And sometime later, I’d hear Mom and Dad downstairs, Dad singing the stone fox song to Mom until she gave in to his kisses. And we’d all be happy again. I don’t remember the last time I heard the song. Just the absence of it.
My mother was twenty-eight when she died. Dad’s friend Audrey from his gardening club was looking after me in her sweet-smelling bungalow when she got the call. My parents had driven out to Assiniboine Park; my father could work wonders with plants, and the city consulted him when designing the elaborate English Gardens that tourists and locals fell all over.
When I was old enough to understand, I’d heard it went like this:
Their little Volvo plowed right through the fencing along the bike path, careening headlong into the river. They dredged the car from the water, but they could not find my mother’s body. My father’s washed up like a discarded shopping cart on a bank near the Alexander docks. My mother evaded local crime scene investigators until they eventually gave up — Must have washed all the way to the States , they said. I thought maybe she had gone off on an adventure, like the heroes of my stories, and that she’d left us behind to protect us. An accident , they’d officially said. Maybe intentional , others whispered. We’d never know.
But nothing could be so easy. The dead never rest when they’ve left too many secrets behind. I only learned that after the moths.

The Sigil of the Moth Queen
Five days before the dead body in the snow, and fourteen years after Ravenna and Aaron Harken inhaled a lungful of the Assiniboine, I sat in the back of English class, trying really, really hard not to rub my left eye. The best solution I’d co