Scroll down to read ASCENDANT’S Prologue!
If You Were Young Again…
Would it be a dream come true or truly a nightmare?
For Sybelle, the youngest of the Balazova sisters, awakening on the parallel world of Eleutia is no dream come true. From near suffocation to changes in her flesh, Eleutia seems a strange and hostile place, though the world itself feels oddly familiar. Her resonance with The Kestrel, the mysterious leader of the CastOuts, only increases her bewilderment, as does the appearance of Mother Tree.
As Mother pulls Sybi into her orbit, the controlling Alchemics continue to tighten the noose on Eleutia. War is brewing—no longer will Eleutia’s symbiotic animal clans tolerate the Alchemic strictures.
Could Sybelle be the fulcrum fated to avoid destruction and save this strange world? Or is she merely a pawn to be used by the Alchemics in their battle for supremacy?
Worse, Sybi’s tug-of-war may ultimately destroy her, the sisters she adores, and the man who has come to mean the world to her?
Or will Sybelle ascend, triumphant, and save all she holds dear?
Ascendant—Chapter 1
Wakeup…wakeup…wakeup
Stop it!
The voice in her head was relentless, driving her near mad, insisting she wake up over and over…
She wanted to sleep.
Where had the voice come from? It was a woman’s voice, low and deep and weighted with age.
Like the mist on a sunny morning, the voice dissipated to silence.
She slept.
Wakeup…wakeup…wakeup
Not yet. She was so comfy, clouds of dreams luring her to faraway places. She was of the ether, dancing and twirling like the Firebird in Stravinsky’s magical ballet. The lotus eaters welcoming Odysseus and his men. Daphne, pursued by Apollo, while laurel branches grew from her fingers and arms, her torso’s bark rising to encompass her.
Wakeup…wakeup…wakeup
Shouting!
Her eyes flew open, dry and crusty. She blinked rapidly, still tired, the kind of tired where you wanted to sleep forever. Her nose was stuffy, her muscles achy. She blinked again. Foggy blue wisps surrounded her, and high above their swirls, a faint sun. She lay on her back—why?—she never slept that way. She raised her arms to stretch.
Ow.
She had hit something. Odd. Blinking rapidly enabled her to see the clear arched lid above her. She pushed. The cover didn’t budge. She smoothed her palms up and down the curved surface.
A patch of fog dissipated, and her heart sped up, her breaths rapid.
She lay in a transparent coffin.
Sweet Christmas! She breathed deep…and gasped. Pressure on her chest, a boulder crushing her.
Tried again. Couldn’t breathe. Breathe!
Had to get out get out get out get out.
Her fists pounded the enclosure over and over, and she choked out a scream, twisting, rocking. Getout, getout, getout!
A shadow above that grew to monstrous size. A horrible screech.
The coffin lid disappeared, the blue fog dispelling.
“Breathe,” the deep voice demanded, backlighting the man who blocked the sun.
Cool, crisp air filled her lungs, and she gulped it down faster and faster.
Black descended.
Leaning over her, the man cupped her shoulders. “Slow down and breathe.”
Apollo—the angles and planes of his face beautiful and terrible—whose strange hair fell forward, as his black eyes bored into hers, asking…
No.
Arms slid beneath her, lifting her.
Her chest rose up and down, faster and faster and…
The Kestrel stared down at the limp woman in his arms. He had raced through the forest at a speed few could match, run for miles, fixated yet again on the disparate elements the Alchemics had used to create him, to create all the CastOuts. Along with man, he was hawk and another creature—the Alchemics did that, combine different species with humans to create a new being. Yet he felt incomplete, for he was a man but not a man. He wished to feel whole.
When he had heard shouts and screams, he pushed his body faster, arriving at a clearing awash in blood and a glass cylinder sitting on a hovercart. Three men lay on the ground, dead, one of them his Clanmate, Calix. Kes had last seen him hauling a lasecannon.
The fogged capsule—he recognized its purpose—encased a Made One. A dead Made One. He drew his sword. He would go to the capsule and smash the abomination that held the woman, one the Alchemics had constructed as her prison and death sentence. Her ending pained him. The Alchemics had done this to her, both created and destroyed, and it hurt his soul. Each breath he took made him angrier and angrier.
A muffled scream shocked made him race over to find her alive within the cylinder, screaming as she pushed at her prison’s immovable glass.
Kes tried to unlatch the thing, failed, and he sliced his sword down across the lock. He threw off the lid.
She wheezed, but when he told her to breathe, her breath sped up, and he had touched her, his fury at the Alchemics dissipating to a sense of want. Strange, for she was skin and bones, her hair falling out.
May Father Sky guide him, for no reason he understood, she was his to protect.
Panicked eyes captured his, eyes the color of turquoise, the blue-green gem prized by the Cats. He slid his arms beneath her shoulders and hips and lifted her from the pod.
Her chest rose and fell like a bellows, her eyes rolling back, and she sagged, unconscious.
But she was alive.