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!
Second 500:
Eventually, I start to feel things
again. The scrape on my jaw stings, for some reason my hand is pulsing as if
it’s swelling up, and my courage has sunk all the way to my boots. “I hate
you,” I growl but my words are muffled by Guy’s hoodie. He’s peeled me from the
floor and propped me up against his chest. That explains the rank aftershave
chemicals on the back of my tongue. “You are the worst,” I add for good
measure.
“I know,” he sighs. “Tried to stop
you getting yourself killed and I dislocated your shoulder.”
“Is that what happened? It got
dislocated?”
“Yeah.”
“Ugh.” I push to to my feet and
despite a perilous wobble, I stay upright. My arm is entirely numb, shoulder to
wrist. I fold my arms around myself when I see everyone’s eyes on me. All the
Red followed me out apparently, even our newest member, Steph.
“Are you ready to listen to us now?”
Mavers asks tentatively, one of his hands hovering as if to touch me.
“I’ve already listened to everything
you have to say,” I say slowly, “and it didn’t change anything. If I don’t go
to Pluto, Fray will die—really die.
But there’s a chance I can save her. I was shown that in a vision for a reason.
I have to do this, and I want to do
it, so there’s nothing you can say to stop me. Please stop trying.”
I
call on my newly returned Earth Majick, peeling the roots away from the tree,
pulling up dirt and leaves and grass until a space has been created, big enough
to hold her.
“I can’t let you go there, Yasmin,”
Mavers says, but I can sense he’s given up trying to convince me. Amity puts a
hand on his arm to comfort him but he flinches. I don’t have the space in my
mind to think about how complicated everything has become in the Red. I want to
find a dark room and lie down and forget everything that happened in the last
few months, but I can’t. I’d only just found Fray, only just saved her from
Incar and seen her save herself, when she died. I want to laugh at the cruelty
of it but that would only make me look mad.
“I’d go with you, Yasmin,” Cornelia
says when a harsh silence falls. I meet her eyes and nod. She can’t leave her
sister behind, not when she’s so sick. Unlike Fray, Priscilla survived the trip
from the Legend Mirror to Earth. Mavers thinks it’s because Priscilla was
further along in the transition from Legendary to … whatever they are now.
Cornelia said Priscilla’s childhood in the Legend Mirror could have saved her.
But we don’t know anything for sure. The only thing that’s certain is Priscilla
is sick from her exposure to raw Majick and whatever else the Incar did to her,
and Fray is … gone.
I
lay Fray in a cradle of earth, safe in the roots of the tree, and I use my
power to form a protective web around her of ivy and vines.
Come back tomorrow for the next 500 words of The Powers of Callaire!!
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.
