Shattered (18 page)

After al , they too had been but pawns in this ugly game of deception.

With a large earth-shattering roar, the building around me began shaking as pieces of the Coliseum fel like the force field above Arcadia.

The dogs huddled around me, seeking comfort from the chaos around them, and as I bent down to hold them, I caught a glimpse of gold, armor and then a large looming shadow descending straight into the arena towards me. I knew without question who it was and smiled.

It was my father. General Adar.

**************

Kama, Liam, and Torrid’s story continues in Volume 3 of Desire.

Passion (Volume 3, Desire)

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PASSION

(Desire Volume #3)

Al around her, Arcadia is col apsing while Kama is faced with certain death. In the third book of the DESIRE dystopian series, Kama is now part of the fight, which pits her against her longtime love and betrothed Liam. In the most brutal arena, hidden in the perfection of Arcadia, Kama wil discover the truth even if it kil s her.

Releases

2012

Excerpt from the bestselling

FROST SERIES ™

Award-winning Finalist, Multi-genre Fiction, 2nd Annual

International Book Awards

Award-winning Finalist, Chick-Lit/Women’s Literature, 2nd

Annual International Book Awards

Bitter Frost

kailin gow

The dream had come again, like the sun after a storm. It was the same dream that had come many times before, battering down the doors of my mind night after night since I was a child. It was the sort of dreams al girls dream, I suppose – a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of leaves that breathe and make music when they are rustled in the wind, and rivers that bubble and froth with secrets.
Dreams
, my mother always told me,
represent part of our unconsciousness – the place
where we store the true parts of our soul, away from
the rest of the world.
My mother was an artist; she always thought this way. If it was true, then my true soul was a denizen of this strange and fantastical world. I often felt, in waking hours, that I was in exile, somehow – somehow less myself, less
true
, than I had been in my enchanted slumber. The real world was only a dream, only an echo, and in silent moments throughout the day it would hit me:
I am not
at home here
.

I would shake the thought off, of course, dismiss it as stupid, try and apply my mother's armchair psychoanalysis to the situation. But then, before bed, the thought would come to me, trickle through the mire of worries (boys, school, whether or not I'd remembered to charge my IPod before getting into bed, whether or not my banner would be torn down yet again from the homeroom message board) –
will I have the dream tonight?
And then, another thought would come to me alongside it.
Will
I be going home again
?

And the night before my sixteenth birthday, the dream came again – stronger and more vivid than it had ever come before, as if the gauzy wisp of a curtain between reality and dream-land had at last been torn open, and I looked upon my fantasy with new eyes.

I was a fairy princess. (When waking, I would chide myself for this fantasy – sixteen-year-old girls should want to start a fruitful career in environmental activism, not twirl around in silk dresses). But I was a fairy princess, and I was a child. I dreamed myself into a palace – with spires reaching up into the sun, so that the rays seemed to pour gold down onto the turrets. The floors were marble; vines bursting with flowers were wrapped around al the colonnades.

The hal s were covered in mirrors – gold-framed glass after gold-framed glass – and in these hundred kaleidoscopic images I could see my reflection refracted a hundred times.

I was a toddler – perhaps four, maybe five years old, decked out in elaborate jewels, swaddled in lavender silk, yards and yards of the fabric – the color of my eyes. I hated the color of my eyes in real life – themes "justify"ir pale color seemed to make me alien and strange – but here, they were beautiful.

Here, I was beautiful. Here, I was home.

The music grew louder, and I could hear its melody. It was not like human music – no, not even the most beautiful concertos, most elaborate sonatas. This was the music that humans try to make and fail – the language of the stars as they twinkle, the rhythm of the human heart as it beats, the glimmering harmony of al the planets and al the moons and al the secret melodies of nature. It was a music that haunted me always, whenever I woke up.

Beside me there was a boy – a few years older than I was. I knew his name; somehow my heart had whispered it to my brain.
Kian
. Al the palace around me was golden – with peach hues and warm, pulsating life – but Kian was pale, pale like snow. His eyes were icy blue, with just a hint of silver flecked around the irises; his hair was so black that ink itself would drown in it. He seemed out of place in the vernal palace that was my home – out of season with the baskets of ripe fruit that hung down from the ceiling, with the sweet, honey-strong smel of the flowers. But he was beautiful, and al the more beautiful for his strangeness.

We were dancing to the music, our bodies echoing the sounds we heard – or perhaps the sounds were echoing us. We were learning the Equinox Dance. It was the dance that we would dance on our wedding day.

It was a custom in this fairy kingdom that royal children would learn this dance – the most complicated and mysterious of al dances – for their wedding days. And so we al practiced, day after day (night after dream-rich night), for the day that we would come of age, and dance the dance truly, our feet moving in smooth unison, echoing the commingling of our souls.

commingling of our souls.

My father was the fairy king of the Summer Kingdom – a place where everything tasted like honey and felt like the morning sun on your forehead.

Kian's mother was the Winter Queen of the Winter Kingdom, a place beyond the mountains where cool breezes turned into arctic chil , where a castle made of amethyst stood upon a rocky peak, and evergreens dotted the horizon. And it was only fitting that our two kingdoms should meet, should join together; we were the chosen ones.

“You wil be my Queen,” the boy whispered to me. His voice was confident, strong.

The dance was stil difficult for us. I got tangled in my waves of lavender satin, tripping over his silver shoes. He in turn kept fumbling with his hands, trying to spin me around the waist and instead, elbowing me in the side – but somehow it didn't hurt.

“Sil y,” cried the other girl watching us. She, like Kian, was stunning – her hair was as long and lustrous as a starless night; her eyes were silver, lik And then everything changed and became chaos – my home was suddenly ripped apart and replaced by a new scene. Something –
something
–

was attacking, something with teeth and horns and claws that ripped, something that made a great and bel owing sound I could hear even when I pressed my hands tightly to my ears.
The Minotaur.

The screaming came from al directions; everybody was running – me and Shasta and Kian –

and the adults, al of them – away from the Minotaur, into each other. Everyone had gone mad. And then someone – someone – was fighting it, a cavalcade of fairy knights each shining in his golden armor –

and some knights from the Winter Kingdom too, in their silver.

The Summer King and Queen were there, and the Winter Queen was there too. She looked like Shasta, but older – and her face was different. There was something hard and glinting in her eyes that I could not see in Shasta's, like the shiny specks in stone. I was afraid.

“This is your fault!” a voice snapped – I could not tel to whom it belonged.

“No – it's yours!” Another voice – equal y angry, equal y cold.

“If it hadn't been for your kingdom...”

“Don't give me those excuses – the Minotaur is a device of your court!”

The voices grew higher and stranger, angrier, louder, quicker and quicker in their retorts until I felt like I was surrounded in a cacophony of rage, bel owing over and over again until at last al I heard was:

“
It's all because of that girl!
” And for a moment, they were al silent, and al of them were staring at me.

I could not understand, but it did not matter.

Before I could think, could understand what was going on, what was happening to me, the scene had changed again.

I felt his arms around me. That was the first thing; I felt it before I could see anything, see him. I felt his arms encircle my shoulders, feel him brushing my shoulder blades lightly with his fingertips. I shivered. His hands took mine. mes

“Oh, Breena,” he said to me. “My Breena.” His blue eyes took on a look of sharp determination; he stared at me with such intensity that I felt that his eyes had penetrated into the truest part of my true soul, a part hidden even to the rest of part of my true soul, a part hidden even to the rest of this strange and wonderful land.

“I wil kil you, Breena. It is what I have to do. It is decreed.” He cupped my face with his hands, and I could feel his cool breath whispering upon my cheek. “We are mortal enemies.”

Always, every night, that same dream – that same fear, that same joy. When I woke up each morning, I felt a profound sense of loss, a yearning that stretched so deeply it crossed the bounds of reality itself. The alarm clock would ring, and everything would change. I was a nearly-sixteen-year-old girl, with suede boots, with T-shirts bearing sayings I believe in.” I had an IPod, a cel phone, my laptop (with pages ful of html code for my website brainchild. I spoke in rushed slang about the latest films and television shows, played video games with Logan, teased him when he won, teased him when he lost. I wore little to no makeup and complained about homework during G-Format. The idea of dating – of fumbling high school boys trying to score in between stolen keg stands, of Facebook relationship statuses and hastily-texted endearments

– repulsed me.

But for a few hours each night, I was somebody else. I was a princess in a castle, with a dress made of lavender and besides me there is a prince with arctic-blue eyes, and arms wrapped closely around me, and lips coming nightly ever closer to mine...

I was home
.

From Bestselling Author Kailin Gow

Bitter Frost (The Frost Series)

Award-winning Finalist, Multi-genre Fiction Award-wining Finalist, Women’s Literature 2nd Annual International Book Awards

To be Made into a Major Worldwide Game Series

Al her life, Breena had always dreamed about fairies as though she lived among them...beautiful fairies living among mortals and living in Feyland. In her dreams, he was always there the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. When Breena turns sixteen, she begins seeing fairies and other creatures mortals don’t see. Her best friend Logan, suddenly acts very protective. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. That’s fine and al , but for the fact that humans rarely survive a trip to Feyland, a kiss from a fairy general y means death to the human unless that human has fairy blood in them or is very strong, and although Kian seemed to be her intended, he seems to hate her and wants her dead.

Now Available

Playlist for Shattered (DESIRE #2)
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