Hi everyone! To celebrate the impending release of The Powers of Callaire, I'm releasing 500 words of the book per day. Come back to Words From Saruuh each day to read the first 2 chapters!
Fifth 500:
I curl up on the padded seat in front
of one window, poking yellow filling back through a hole in the leather cover,
and wait for Cornelia to join me.
“Rowan’s a prick,” she says with a
sharp smile, moving my feet so she can sit. The light turns her blond hair
white, her fair skin even paler. She looks innocent and unassuming but the
personality that lurks under that saintly veneer is wicked. I return her smile
and lean my head against the glass.
“He’s not,” I say. “He’s just
scared.”
“Scared boys do stupid things. Fear
makes them dangerous—they make mistakes.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” I argue.
“Men make more than us.”
I glance at her, amused. “So you’re
not interested in boys, then?”
“Oh, I’m interested in them.” She
flicks her hair over one shoulder, scowling at the strip of carpet down the
aisle. “I’m just not happy about it.”
I laugh, a deep rumbling thing that’s
as much beast as it is girl. This is what I need—something to distract me. “Are
you interested in anyone in particular?” When her cheeks redden and she swears,
aware of her blush, I sit up, crossing my legs under me. “You are.”
“That’s irrelevant,” she barks.
“Let’s talk about Rowan being deplorable instead.”
“Who is it?” I’ve never had this, the
eager giddiness of knowing one of your friends has a crush. Minnie and Ran were
obvious from the start, Vic was already halfway in a relationship with Alice
when I found out he liked someone, and Willa, my best friend outside the Red,
was dating her boyfriend long before I knew them. But Cornelia, sharp, fearsome
Cornelia, having a crush on someone? I need
to know. “Best friends tell each other their secrets,” I insist.
She raises a perfectly-shaped
eyebrow. “Best friends?”
“You helped me save my girlfriend.
And I helped you save your sister, didn’t I? Sort of? That’s a bond for life.”
Cornelia pats a tuft of my hair.
“That doesn’t mean I’m confessing anything.”
“It’s not a confession. Like I
said—secret.” She glares in response, so I take to persuasion. “It’d help me
forget about … everything. At least for a while.”
“That’s a terrible incentive.” She
shakes her head, debates with herself. “If I tell you it’s nobody you know,
will that satisfy you?”
“So it’s someone I know?”
Cornelia pushes to her feet and
inspects a nearby bookcase. She slides a moss green book from the shelf and
frowns at it. “Fine. Yes. And that’s all I’m saying.”
I smile to myself. “Thank you for
telling me.”
Cornelia makes a noise in the back of
her throat. “Don’t thank me.” She leans against the bookcase, her face turned
to the fan blades whirring overhead. “Thank you for being interested. It’s been
a while since anyone asked me about boys.” She laughs. “I haven’t missed it but
it’s nice to be asked anyway.”
“If you want me to carry on asking …”
“Absolutely
not,” she sputters. My eyes widen at the sight of Cornelia flustered. She
really likes him, whoever he is. But she’s not ready to tell me who he is and I
respect that. I drop the interrogation.
Come back tomorrow for the last 500 words of The Powers of Callaire excerpt!!
Yasmin’s girlfriend is dead, but she will stop at nothing to bring Fray back. Even if that means going to the Otherland and making a bargain with the Ruler of All Souls. If Yasmin finds Pluto’s lost power, they’ll return Fray’s soul to her body.
Yasmin’s search takes her, and two of her friends, from Bucharest to France to Wales, and exposes a horrifying secret with Venus, Yasmin’s mother, at the heart of it. With a murderous, fiery god and the incarnation of death in her way, Yasmin will have to compromise her morals and harness the Legendary power in her veins. If she fails, Fray’s soul will be lost forever.
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