Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Carissa Broadbent
- Language: English
- Genre: Dark Fantasy Horror
- Format: PDF/EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The first time I met death, it was in my first breaths—or rather, the
first breaths I didn’t take. I was born too small, too sickly, too quiet.
My father used to say that he’d never heard such a silence as when I
was born—several terrible minutes in which no one said a word—and that
when I finally started to wail, he’d never been so grateful to hear a scream.
Death never left, though. That became clear quickly, even before
anyone wanted to acknowledge it.
The truth came the second time I met death, eight years later, when my
sister was born. She, unlike me, screamed from the moment she came into
the world. My mother, on the other hand, went forever silent.
My father had been right. There was nothing worse than that kind of
silence.
And it was in that horrible soundlessness, as I stifled my coughs and my
tears with the back of my hand, that the healer gave me a strange look.
Later, after my mother’s funeral, he would pull me aside.
“How long has your breathing been that way?” he would ask.
Death always followed me, you see.
It quickly became clear that I wouldn’t have long to live. In the
beginning, they tried to hide this from me. But I’d always liked knowing
things. I was bad at reading people, but I was good at understanding
science. I knew death even before I could name it.
But the third time I met death, it hadn’t come for me.
It was given to the town of Adcova like a silk blanket, settling slowly
over our lives, placed there by one of the gods themselves.
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.
Like all the other gods, Vitarus is a fickle and emotional being. The
difference between excess and absence a mere whim of his moods. Entire
lives—entire towns—made or unmade by a thoughtless wave of his hand.
For a long time, Vitarus smiled upon Adcova. We were a flourishing
farm town, nestled in a fertile patch of land. We worshipped all the gods of
the White Pantheon, but Vitarus was the god of the farmer, and so he was
our favored deity. For a long time, he treated us well.
That changed slowly, in the beginning. One spoiled crop, then two.
Weeks and then months of nothing. Then, one day, it changed all at once.
You can feel it in the air when a god is nearby. I felt it that day. I opened
my eyes and stared at the ceiling and could have sworn I smelled the smoke
of funeral pyres.
I went outside. It was cold, my breath coming in little puffs of white. I
was fifteen, but looked younger. My body shook. I was very thin, no matter
how much I ate. Death stole every mouthful, you see, and it had been
especially hungry lately.
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