The Master Magician

Emery paused, studying the plum tree and the view before turning to Ceony, who could read everything in his vivid, bright eyes. Her pulse beat with knowing.

She squeezed Emery’s hand and he leaned in to kiss her. A breeze laden with the scent of wildflowers danced around them.

He pulled back. Rested his forehead against hers. Looked into her eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

His eyes smiled. “I believe I’m supposed to do the talking, Miss Twill.”

She gazed at him, silent.

He released her hand and ran his fingertips along the sides of her neck, their noses a breath apart. “You are the kind of woman who makes me believe in God, Ceony,” he murmured. “I don’t know how else it could be possible to find you. For heaven’s sake, you even delivered yourself to my front door.”

She smiled. Her heartbeat steadied.

“How many men can honestly say a woman has walked their heart?” he asked. “But I can. And if you’ll have me, I’d like you to stay there.”

Tears welled in Ceony’s eyes. She didn’t blink them away.

Emery reached into his pocket and pulled from it a loop of white and violet paper about the width of his fist, made of dozens of tiny, crisscrossing links. Not a spell, just something crafted to be beautiful. From it hung a gold ring that glimmered rose in the sunlight. A diamond carved in the shape of a raindrop sat at its center, flanked on either side by a small emerald.

The paper magician slipped the ring off the paper loop and turned it in his hands. Dropping to one knee, he said, “Ceony Maya Twill, will you marry me?”

THE END





AN EXCERPT FROM

CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG’S


FOLLOWED BY FROST





Editor’s Note: This is an uncorrected excerpt and may not reflect the final book.





PROLOGUE



I HAVE KNOWN COLD.

I have known the cold that freezes to the bones, to the spirit itself. The cold that stills the heart and crystallizes the blood. The kind of cold that even fire fears, that can turn a woman to glass.

I have seen Death.

The cold lured him to me. I saw him near my home, his dark hair rippling over one shoulder like thick forest smoke as he stooped over the bed of the quarryman’s only son. I saw his amber eyes as he tilted the rim of his wide-brimmed hat to greet me. I saw him kneel in the snow before me with his arms wide and heard him whisper, Come with me.

I have known cold, the chills with which even the deepest winters cannot compare. I have lived it, breathed it, and lost by it. I have known cold, for it dwelled in the deepest hollows of my soul.

And the day I broke Mordan’s heart, it devoured me.





CHAPTER 1



THE FIRST BITE OF HONEY taffy melted in my mouth. I savored its sweetness, spiced lightly with cinnamon imported from the Southlands beyond Zareed—strange, savage lands with strange people and stranger customs, but nothing in the Northlands could compare to their intense, exotic spices. Merchants only delivered the candies in the early spring, and their first shipment had arrived that morning. Together, Ashlen and I had bought nearly half a case. My satchel bulged with paper-wrapped taffies to the point where I had to switch the strap from shoulder to shoulder every quarter mile, the bag weighed on me so.

“My pa will be so angry if he finds out!” Ashlen laughed, covering her mouth to hide half-chewed taffy. Her plain, mouse-brown hair bobbed about her shoulders as she spoke. “I’m supposed to be saving for that writing desk.”

“This is a once, maybe twice-a-year opportunity,” I insisted, resting my hand on the satchel. “We could hardly let it pass us by.” I didn’t tell her that I had more than enough in my allowance to cover her share. If Ashlen needed a writing desk, her father could put in more hours at the mill.

Ashlen unwrapped another candy. “I could die eating these.”

I poked her in the stomach. “And you would die fat, too!”

We laughed, and I hooked my arm through hers as we followed the dirt path ahead of us. It wound from the mercantile on the west edge of Euwan, past the mill and my father’s turnery, clear to Heaven’s Tear—the great, crystal lake that hugged the town’s east side, and the only thing that put us on Iyoden’s map.

My world was so small, then. Euwan was an ordinary town full of ordinary people, and I believed myself an oyster pearl among them. But I was about to spark a chain of events that would shatter the perfectly ordinary shell I lived in—events that would undoubtedly change my life, in its entirety, forever.