Inseparable

Shards of Sevia #6 is now in the hands of quite a few ARC readers, and it’s just about a month until it’s available to everyone! I’m really looking forward to being able to share this story, so much so that I decided to post a sneak preview today.

Without further ado, here’s the first part of the first chapter:

CHAPTER ONE: DUNYA

Radoslav and I got quiet as we drew near the stretch of sidewalk where Sami Shurdar and her family had been murdered. I knew Rado wanted to put an arm around me, or at least hold my hand. His longing to touch me radiated off him like heat. But if he did, I might cry, so I kept a step or two ahead of him, just out of reach. We didn’t have time for tears.

Even after International Peacekeeping Force troops from all over Europe entered Sevia and took control of Dor, our capital city, ending the power struggle between Tur and Sevian militias, my old neighborhood wasn’t a good place to linger.

But Rado and I had a mission. If we wanted Bobur, the orphan boy I’d rescued, to be our son, not just in name, but legally, we had to find his birth certificate first. Since the Family Affairs Office in Pasha had been burned to the ground and with it, any legal evidence of Bobur’s existence, our best hope to start the adoption process was to look for his certificate in his dead family’s home.

Memories of loss closed in like the shadows of the abandoned apartments. Each building in this part of Pasha looked the same as the one before it, massive blocks of concrete, white paint faded to dirty yellow, and wrought-iron balconies on the second and third floors.

Only mine stood out. Three months ago, when the IPF troops evacuated all Tur people from the city, the face of our building had been bare. Since then, someone had spray-painted a familiar image across the entire front in wild, sweeping lines— a black bull locked in combat with a white stallion. Seeing it there, so fresh it practically dripped, made my eyes well up.

I’d know my little brother Desh’s work anywhere. But Desh had been dead for over a year, murdered by White Horse militia members, just like the Shurdars.

“Who did that?” Rado asked, his voice just above a whisper, tipping his head back to see it all at once.

I studied him, my husband of three weeks and four days. He was short. A little overweight. He trimmed his black hair close to his head to hide the fact it was thinning on top. Not much to look at, maybe, but Rado had never taken advantage of me, never lied to me. He’d never asked for anything in exchange for what he offered—except the kind of love I wasn’t sure I could give. He was so good it scared me.

“Who would have painted that?” he repeated.

“Erkan,” I whispered. “He must have come back here after we were evacuated. The style though—that’s not traditional. It’s Desh’s. He did it for Desh.”

Rado reached for my hand, and I let him find it. With a hesitant thumb, he traced the ridges of my knuckles and the plain silver wedding band he’d bought me the week before.

“I wonder where Erkan found a ladder long enough to paint that high up,” I said.

​­Rado just stood there with his lips parted. The silence made my skin prickle.

He shrugged. “Maybe he balanced on the balcony railings.”

The setting sun slowly dipped behind the building opposite us, and Erkan’s tribute to the Tur people who’d lived and died in Pasha—especially our brother—faded into shadow.