Heir of Grief (The Bloodwright Chronicles #1)

Prologue

No one tells you that dying feels a lot like falling. Like a meteor crashing through the earth’s atmosphere, burning itself up so that by the time it actually hits the surface, it’s a crumbled mess of dust that no one will be able to put back together.

I don’t remember much from before. Just a glimmer of things, memories—the familiar scent of my mother’s Beverly Hills perfume, the way my grandmother would yell at the TV during Wheel of Fortune, the gentle melody of Christmas music playing from the old radio in the kitchen as Mom tried that new recipe she found in Home and Garden last week.

Then there was heat. Fire. Smoke. The feeling of drowning, but you’re not under water. Choking on the words never said, the plans that will never come to fruition, the what if’s that made life and the future feel so open to possibilities, now doused in darkness.

Flashes of the past and present assaulted my senses as I could feel myself being carried, my body limp and tired, the last bit of my life barely hanging on as this devil, with its long, hard stone body, and sharp talons, took me to wherever souls go next.

But there was one last thin thread that tied me back to reality, to life. I wasn’t dead yet. I was barely alive, but I wasn’t dead. The thin thread that held on against all odds pulled at my chest, at the amulet around my neck.

The meteor that was my fleeting life hadn’t imploded yet. It hadn’t erupted into dust. But it was close.