Of Crows and Thorns (BONUS SCENES)

Glass Teardrop - Chapter One

THE NIGHT THE ALVERAC WAS SIGNED

EVVIE (17 YEARS OLD)

The clamor of thunderous chanting and stamping feet and the baying for blood swarmed above the fighting pit and wore at what little strength I had. I stood on an abandoned level in a shadowed alcove of fissured rock and crushed iron and steel.

Down below it was much like a gladiator's arena. Rickety ringside seating crawled up the walls, circling the pit gouged out beneath the city of Ascendria. A space of violence carved within its twisted metal roots. Many of my peers exchanged bets in the form of cash or expensive trinkets. The floodlights bleached their twisted expressions roaring for a knock-out into something macabre and ghoulish.

Amongst the dirt and rocks and gritty sand, Graysen Crowther was embroiled in a bare-knuckle brawl with Zielenski. Blood drizzled from a vicious gash on his cheek and ran down his bare chest.

They circled one another, exchanging blows, dodging fists and lethal kicks. Zielenski was twenty, a year older than Graysen. His dark blond hair matted with sweat was plastered to his forehead and his right eye was almost swollen shut. In a swift and deft move Graysen whipped around with a roundhouse kick. Zielenski jerked back, scuffing dirt and narrowly missed being struck.

Graysen's brothers were watching nearby. While Kenton leaned his forearms on the railing, his icy interest on the fight taking place and ignoring the two women standing beside his broad figure, Jett on the other hand was half-paying attention, flirting with a cluster of girls surrounding him.

I'd retreated to a level high above the ring to steel my jittery nerves but someone had followed me up here. Caidan had wrapped his large hand around my forearm to stop me from running away. Internally I cringed at his touch. He'd unintentionally placed his hand over the patch of skin that ached with petaled bruises.

I'd had another boy touch me on the exact same spot. Except yesterday it had been a bruising grip from smooth hands, rusty freckles peppering the porcelain skin. The boy had seemed as if he'd be kind and gentle. He hadn't been.

And yet this boy looming over me with muscles already roping his youthful body—a promise of the man he'd become one day—looked brutal and he'd take great pleasure in hurting me. But his touch was soft and careful.

Caidan still wore the elegant black suit he'd been wearing this evening when his family visited mine to claim my younger sister for marriage. Graysen was dealing with the choice his family made on his behalf with the brawl in the pit below. Incense heated my blood that he thought so lowly of my baby sister. She was too young for marriage, so they'd wait until she was older, and yet he obviously didn't want the union.

Caidan was a year younger than me at sixteen. A boy, I reminded myself, even though there was little boyish about him. I'd never spoken to him until this night. I'd observed him at House Gatherings and admired his lighthearted spirit and ease with others. He was quick to bring a smile to anyone with his sharp wit and verbal sparring jabs. So confident in who he was. I was jealous.

He had an undercut razed across one side and on the crown were longer locks sweeping the opposite way as if he'd stood on the beach and the briney wind had teased it into stiff waves. He slanted his head as something on my body caught his attention.

I froze. The air clenched in my throat as his dark lashes lowered and he reached a hand toward my throat. It was a light touch, a roughened fingertip brushing a small point on my collarbone. A shock of pleasure tightened in my chest and widened my eyes with surprise. It made my heartbeat falter.

"What's this?" he asked. The riot of noise rising up from the fighting pit was too loud to hear normally, so he leaned in to speak near my ear and his warm breath washed across my cheek, sending a shiver of goosebumps across my skin.

I inhaled his scent: fresh laundry powder and cinnamon and boy. In the cool underground air, his body heat embraced mine the same way a fire did when I sat beside the hearth.

At first I wasn't sure what Caidan was curious about. He drew his hand back, and there, hooked around his forefinger was the delicate chain and its glass pendant. His eyes shone in the dark with a silverish sheen that reminded me of moonlight on water.

Captured inside the pendant was a teardrop of sea glass. Not the kind that once had been a piece of a broken bottle, polished to smoothness by an undercurrent sweeping it endlessly against the seabed, only to cast it from its depth for someone to find upon the shore. This one had been formed unnaturally.

Its beauty lay in its wild, jagged edges.

The faint blue hue reminiscent of the salty droplets staining my little sister's cheeks a long, long time ago. The sea glass was my way to remind me to be more like Nelle. It was a symbol of her imperfection with its splintery teardrop shape. Bold and brave and fearless. That something extraordinary could come from something so tiny and fierce.

At first my father wanted me to discard the glass teardrop. He wasn't sure if we should keep something like this as a memento. But at my wish he had it commissioned into a pendant. The jeweler had applied a special coating that wrapped around the sea glass to protect me from its thorny shards.

I'd worn it ever since on a chain of silver with the odd golden link. It kept me company through endless dance lessons that wore at my body and House Gatherings that diminished my spirit. Afterward I'd clutch it in the hope it would infuse me with strength, that one day I'd be as brave as Nelle.

Finally that moment came when I'd had enough of being fearful. Tonight I'd stolen off the estate for a single night of freedom. Roxy, I'd decided to name myself. A bold, brash name to fit a girl who'd come out to watch a bare-knuckle fight. Not a single member of the upper ranks recognized me. Except for the boy standing in front of me.

Caidan had known it was me the moment I'd stepped into the fighting pit, despite the raven-black hair and glamour that altered my features. He possessed the rare talent of true sight.

"I found it on the beach years ago," I answered Caidan, feigning casualness with a hitch of a shoulder. He had one braced on the concrete wall behind me that vibrated against my spine with the deep bass of roaring and cheering going on down below.

He pulled back just far enough so I could see the pinch between his thick eyebrows as his mind rolled it around, how I'd found a piece of sea glass half-buried in sand and on a whim decided to keep it around my neck. It didn't fit with the quiet image and the perfect manners I hid behind like a coward.

I expect he'd thought I'd be wearing something expensive with no soul.

What I told him was the truth. I had found it on the beach, but not like how he imagined.