Hello, friends! We’re a month away from the release of Craving Beauty and I’m so excited to share everything we have planned. I recently sent out a special newsletter with some pre-release awesomeness, so be sure to check your inboxes if you’re a subscriber. If you aren’t a subscriber yet, don’t miss out! Check out the link to sign up today:
Meanwhile, I’m keeping busy preparing guest posts for the blog tour + working on the sequel, Scarred Beauty. I hope you’ll stay tuned! Meanwhile, here’s a fresh teaser for those of you who enjoy spoilers 😉
In a village called Whistleande…
Vynasha clutched the sack close to her chest and walked as quickly as the icy rain and her limp would allow. It was better this way if they kept far away. Let the villagers hiss and mock her, let them buy her roses and pray they never knew their source.
In hindsight, leaving as she had might not have been her most brilliant moment.
For though she had claimed her precious supplies, not all feared her enough to stay away.
“Where you going with that, witch?” A gravelly voice called.
“Perhaps she’d like an escort?” Another chuckled.
Vynasha didn’t dare look the rogues in the eye as she passed them on her way to the main street.
“What’s the matter, witch? We not pretty enough for you?” Gravelly voice said.
The men followed her, and Vynasha bit her tongue as her leg gave in the mud.
“Nasty witch!” the other man hissed. “Spreading curses in our village. Why couldn’t you die with the rest of your cursed family? Always put on airs, they did.”
“Enough,” Gravelly voice interrupted. “Take the bag.”
Vynasha swallowed blood as she tried to run.
“Out o’ the way!”
A ramshackle cart suddenly barreled toward them.
Vynasha clutched her bag as she tried to jump, but the mud held fast to her ankle.
The men following her shouted as the cart narrowly avoided Vynasha and seemed to aim straight for them.
Vynasha turned to watch, her heart in her throat, and shivered against the rain.
The street had emptied. Would they have simply watched those men steal Vynasha’s hard-earned goods? Was there no justice left in a world that preyed on the weak?
Her vision blurred and her breath rattled in her chest as she battled her trembling. Hadn’t Mother warned her they needed to be extra careful because they held gifts others feared?
Vynasha turned to the road home and froze.
A hunched and hooded beggar stood in her path, close enough to touch. Her skin prickled as he spoke. “You must take care of the road, Beauty. I shan’t always be here to save you.”
Familiar fury warred with the overwhelming curiosity she felt. “Who are you?”
The beggar stepped aside and lifted a bandaged hand to the road north. “Come, and I shall walk you home.”
Thunder rumbled within smoke-wrought clouds as distant rain fell over the forbidden Wylder Mountains. A winter wind stirred a fresh wave of leaves from the nearby forest to cross their path. An odd scent lingered upon the air, wild and old, its hoarse moaning terrifying. Far worse than the voice Vynasha had been ignoring these past seasons. The voice remained silent as she kept a steady pace with the beggar who’d claimed to save her. If Vynasha weren’t who she was, she’d think him mad. Had she not felt the prickling of something other the moment she’d laid eyes on him?
The beggar was dressed in a strange patchwork of garments that served as the cloak and hood of his robes. The hood was hollowed and deep, and strips of cloth had been wrapped tightly about the beggar’s hands. A rotten stench accompanied the man, but fear and compassion kept her stomach from cringing in discomfort.
The hill on the northern path that would take her home often gave her leg trouble. This beggar moved just as awkwardly as she did during their brief climb. It was a strange comfort.
Silence accompanied them as they walked together, the beggar seeming more focused on sure footing than conversation, yet her curiosity grew until she pressed for answers. “You claim you saved me back in the village. How?”
The beggar didn’t reply, yet she sensed a smile. Was he a foreigner? If so, what foreigner could possibly come from the forbidden northern mountains?
“Do you live around here?” She attempted a different approach. “I thought I knew all the families who farmed north of Whistleande Village.”
The road faded, splitting off to farms either abandoned or barely thriving. What families dared to remain lived in better circumstances than the once overflowing village. The beggar did not venture down any of the paths she expected him to. Trees grew taller and closer to the path the farther north they climbed up the slope, along the edge of the valley. It would not be much longer before the only road left to turn down would be her own.
“You live alone, now, Beauty?” The beggar’s raspy voice startled her.
“Please do not call me Beauty.” Vynasha clenched her fists over her heavy wares and forced her feet to keep moving.
When the man spoke again, she could almost taste his sorrow. “Beauty such as yours should not live alone.”
“Life doesn’t grant favors to anyone, no matter how beautiful or ugly they are. Now, enough riddles. How do you know me? And don’t lie. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
The beggar turned his head slightly towards her. “Would you? Would you believe me if I told you I had met your kin before?” he whispered in a thin, papery voice.
She hated the desperate hope his words gave her. “Where did you see them? When?” The arm beneath her hands flinched and Vynasha belatedly realized she had grabbed the poor man in a too-tight grasp. “Forgive me, I just… please tell me what you know?”
The beggar ran a bandaged hand over the rags covering his arm and hunched even further. “A man and his son were traveling west, before they became lost on the road through the Wylder Mountains.”
All feeling left her legs, and she barely caught her fall on the man’s shoulder. “That’s impossible,” she hissed as she stumbled back from the beggar. “No one goes into those mountains because no one ever returns.”
“I helped them find the path, on one condition,” the beggar wryly said.
Vynasha dared close the distance between them. She doubted there was any disease this poor man had that she couldn’t heal. Any risk was worth learning about Ceddrych and her father’s fate. “Please tell me what happened. When my brother never wrote, I knew something must have happened.” Rain stung her cheeks as she waited for his reply.
“The Wylder Mountains are cursed, Beauty,” the beggar said with a harsh rasp. “and your kin could not leave of their own free will. I promised to find you, to tell you they yet live.”
Vynasha turned back to the distant snow-capped peaks and felt the same powerful pull, the urge to follow that pull to wherever Ceddrych might be. But she had been disappointed so many times, and she was not strong enough to survive more. “I want to believe you…”
“Believe this, then.” The beggar’s bandaged hand entered her vision, a single blue rose in his palm. It was the rose she’d given Ceddrych, in her hope it might protect him.
Vynasha sank to her knees as she accepted the rose. The petals were warm against her fingers and she turned her smile to the beggar’s shadowed face. “Please, tell me where he is.”
Jennifer Silverwood 