Freya-Bennett

Good morning,
          	How are we all today?
          	Here's Chapter 8 of 'Daughter Of Alfheim.'
          	Loreli says goodbye to her namesake, and we finally meet the Nøkken:
          	https://www.wattpad.com/story/411007359-echoes-before-the-oath-book-2-daughter-of-alfheim

Freya-Bennett

Here's a sneak peek at tomorrow's chapter of 'Crimson Threads'
          
          Chapter 6
          Window To Earth
          
          A thousand years passed before I touched the mirror again.
          It waited in its corner, patient as stone, the cloth grey with another millennium of dust. Every morning for a thousand years, I had walked past it without stopping. Each day, the same lie: that I did not need to see what I could not change. The lie had worn thin. I could feel it fraying at the edges each time I passed the covered frame, each time my eyes slid away rather than linger.
          On an autumn morning, I uncovered it. Golden light filled the studio, thick with drifting dust motes, the leaves outside turning. The cloth fell away in a single motion. Beneath it, the obsidian surface was as I remembered, dark and depthless, holding its own night where no reflection lived.
          My tools waited where I had left them a thousand years ago, wrapped in oiled cloth beside the workbench. I unwrapped them slowly, my fingers finding the familiar shapes of handles worn smooth by use. My palm did not touch the glass. Not yet.
          Tools to the frame, first.
          Old symbols ran along the border in careful lines, each one an anchor binding the mirror to a specific face, a specific place I had not wanted to forget. I carved them when my first child left for Lucifer's court, when I needed to see what I could not follow. In all the centuries since, I had never added to them. Hell had been enough.
          A thousand years of wondering had changed what I needed from the glass.
          Hands and fire. My fingers traced the old grooves first, a greeting, a farewell to the anchors that had served me so long. Each symbol was familiar under my touch, worn smooth by the attention I had given them in the early years, when I still hoped the mirror would show me something I could bear.

Freya-Bennett

Here is a snippet from tomorrow's chapter of 'Sunflower Soul'
          Enjoy!
          
          
          Raziel appeared at my door with the look of a man who had something to say and did not know how to begin.
          He stood in the entrance to my study, his hands clasped behind his back, his turquoise wings twitching in a way I had not seen since he left on his first journey. His usual confidence was absent, replaced by something raw and uncertain.
          From my reading, I looked up and took in his posture. The rigid set of his shoulders. The way his gaze kept drifting to the floor and then back to me, as if he were testing whether I was still looking.
          'You look nervous,' I said.
          'I am not nervous.'
          'You are standing in my doorway like a stranger who is not sure he is welcome.'
          He let out a breath, and the tension in his shoulders eased by a fraction. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with unnecessary care. 'I met someone.'
          My pen set aside, I gave him my full attention. 'Tell me about her.'
          'Her name is Oriana. She works in the upper terraces. She grows herbs.' He paused, searching for words. 'She is kind. And patient. And she makes me want to stay put.'
          The last admission came out softer than the rest, as if the words had escaped before he could catch them.
          Crossing the room, I stopped before him. 'You have never said that about anyone.'
          'I have never felt it about anyone.'
          I studied his face. The usual confidence was there beneath the surface, but layered over it was something I had rarely seen in my brother. I could not remember the last time he stayed in one place for more than a few centuries. A seed had been planted in him. I watched him decide whether to water it.
          'When do I meet her?'
          He smiled, relieved, the tension in his shoulders finally releasing. 'Soon.'