So I may not be the greatest at posting on my blog – but I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. So… to make up for stuff… and because it’s Tuesday… how about a couple of Tuesday Teasers. One from Burnt of Devotion. One from Dawn of Ash.

Enjoy. 🙂

ALL FOLLOWING COPYRIGHT 2014 REBECCA ETHINGTON
Imdalind Press and Market Street Books. All following unedited and Subject to change…

BURNT DEVOTION – CHAPTER ONE

I waited for it to come, watching the grey seep into the world, only to have a courtyard materialize before me, the world waving and blending together as my mind took me to a place that I hadn’t seen in what felt like years, the beautiful perfect world that Talon and I had created inside of our Touha.
Even though I was sure I hadn’t moved, even though I could still feel Thom’s hand around mine. I could see the sanctuary that our bond had created. I could see every brick, I could see the bench we had spent so much time on, I could see the shadowed body of a man leaning against the wall.
My soul seemed to jerk at the apparition, the discolored shadowed form seeming out of place. I knew at once who it was, even though I knew he shouldn’t be there, even though I knew that I wasn’t there.
“Talon?” I said his name, my voice soft with longing as I stared at the shadowed shape, sure he had turned toward me before the entire scene vanished into smoke, falling to the ground around me like smoke and ash, leaving me staring at Thom’s tear streaked face, his eyes deep with understanding.
My heart pulsed at seeing him there, torn between two worlds, two realities. I was saddened that Talon had gone, my heart throbbing for the return of the Touha. And yet, I clung to Thom, to the past, and to the last moments I would have with him.
“He will be there waiting for you.” Thom whispered as he leaned close to me, the brilliant blue of his eyes devouring me. “He’s going to be right there… and… and you know who is going to be with him?”
The pulse in my chest became a stab. A stab of memories, a stab of reminders of the life we shared, of the life I had so willingly chosen to forget. For the first time I regretted my decision, not because I had turned my back on a life that had been so good, but because I had turned my back on Thom, a man who for the first time, I realized, was still mourning the loss of our daughter as I was. Was still filled with pain and agony. We had both chosen to run away, but in different ways.
“Rosaline?” The word dug into me, my back arching with fire and a gut wrenching agony that I had thought I escaped.
You can’t escape something that is wound so deeply in your soul, however. I knew that now. I knew that in the way Thom’s voice pulled me from the pain of the curse, the way Rosaline’s memory bound us together.
“Yeah, sweetie, she is going to be right there. Right there with Talon. She’s been waiting for you, waiting… for her mommy.”

DAWN OF ASH – CHAPTER ONE

—–

I stood before the large wooden doors, watching Ilyan as he leaned against the slim beam of light that seeped through the narrow opening. I didn’t dare breathe as I watched his shoulders tense, the long golden length of ribbon moving through the air behind him. The glittering strand lifted and fell in gentle waves as the breeze that moved through the doors moved into the cave, through all of us.
It was the only movement in the cave. No one dared breathe, no one dared move. Everyone stood in small groups surrounding the tall doors, the intricately carved slabs of wood stretching far above Ilyan’s towering frame and into the endless heights of the cave.
A sound like the ocean moved through the doors, a babble of what at first I had mistaken to be chicken scratches, but no understood to be people. People. And from the way the sound grew and dimmed and the light flickered around Ilyan’s frame, I could tell there were a lot of them. After more than a week trudging through this cave, our bodies growing weaker the longer we spent on the sunless chamber, we had arrived in Prague. Well, at least from what I could tell.
No one had said anything when the door had appeared in front of us, it was only an awed silence, a tension in Ilyan’s shoulders as he moved away from my side his hand soft as he placed his palm against the wood, as if he was savoring the touch, the smell, the warmth of the massive doors. For all I knew that was exactly what he was doing. This was his home. And from what Wyn had said there wasn’t much left.
Which would explain the silence and tension that had suddenly filled the cave.
“Wynifred,” Ilyan said from in front of me, his accent thicker than I had heard it in quite some time. “Can you feel him?”
“No, Ilyan.” Wyn said from where she stood beside Thom, her body tensed as if she was preparing for the doors to open and a battle to begin. “T here is something different, but it’s a long way off.”
“Silny?” he asked, turning from the door for the first time to face me, his blue eyes deep with the same question he had just asked Wyn.
I swallowed once as I met his gaze, my insecurities bubbling for only a moment before my jaw squared and my magic surged in heat and excitement, as if the power itself had heard him and was ready to answer.
I felt a pulse of Ilyan magic surge within me, his lips twitching as he let his power move through our bond, the heat a heady reminder. I couldn’t stop the smile that spread over my face as the heat grew, as my fingers flexed and as Ilyan’s voice filled my mind.
“Find him, my love. If anyone can find him. It will be you.”
I knew it was true, just as much as he did. My heart picked up as Ilyan looked at me one last time before I closed my eyes and let my magic spread away from me, through the city my mate had been raised in, the city that held far more blood and fear than I was sure Wyn had felt.
Then Ilyan could see.
But I could see it, and it terrified me.