Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
BRANNON
I woke to the scent of blood, smoke, and sage.
The air was too warm. Not pack-warm, not fire-warm — close, heavy, wet. My body ached like I’d been gutted and stitched together with thorns. My ribs dragged with every breath. Something slick tickled the back of my throat. I swallowed copper.
I tried to move, but the weight of fate held me down.
No, not fate.
A thread.
It hummed along my spine, pulling tight across my sternum, searing through bone and blood. I followed it inward and found her waiting in the dark. Eyes the colour of grave moss. Skin shadowed by candlelight. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her hands — I’d seen them soaked in my blood.
I’d seen her kill me.
My body jerked.
Pain screamed through my side. I wasn’t in the woods anymore. Not on pack ground. I lay on a cot draped with black wool, the scent of herbs and burnt marrow clinging to every fibre. Antlers crowned the walls like guardians. Bundles of teeth hung from iron nails. Thread — red, white, silver — draped the ceiling like a spider’s web.
Magic. Old, ugly and bone-deep magic.
I growled low, throat raw.
She turned. Just a shift of shadow at first, and then the light caught her face, and I stopped breathing.
“You,” I rasped.
Her lips parted, not in surprise, not in fear. No. Recognition. She knew me.
“You shouldn’t be here yet,” she said softly. “It’s too soon.”
Ever Avarice is an Australian Dark Paranormal and Reverse Harem Romance author who loves books and believes there’s magic even in the darkest of places.
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash anthology.
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