Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1.5)

by Carissa Broadbent

Here’s the thing about the God of Abundance. Abundance wears many faces. The god of plenty is also the god of decay. There can be no life without death, no feast without famine.

Death stole every mouthful, you see, and it had been especially hungry lately.

He looked at me the same way that he looked at those dead crops. Like I was the corpse of a dream, buried in everything he couldn’t save.

No, I didn’t want mercy on their behalf. I’d been distraught that I was too weak to end them myself.

I’d always felt disconnected from my body, like it was a strange vessel that only sometimes cooperated with me.

“Was robbing me a crime punishable by death?” “Raping you would have been. Killing you would have been.” “They didn’t do either of those things.” “Yet,” he snarled. “I’ve killed others who deserved it far less.”

“I’ll have him check on her every day, if I have to,” he added, annoyed. “If it’ll keep you from wandering out into that forest like an idiot.”

And they’d brought the most dangerous things of all: desperation and rage.

No, logic doesn’t matter in the face of fear and emotion. Logic falls to its knees before hatred, and hatred flourishes in fear—and

The house was bleeding. Blood dripped down the white stone face,