Scorched Earth: Phoenix Burned (Lick of Fire)

By K. de Long

Description to come.

Scorched Earth is the second book in New York Times bestseller K. de Long's Phoenix Burned arc, part of the multi-author paranormal romance series, Lick of Fire. Phoenix Burned is serialized, so please start with Fire & Fury before reading Scorched Earth, and do not expect a happy ending until you have read the conclusion, Ashes to Ashes, coming in July.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katie de Long
• Release date: May 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386394945

Book preview

Part Two

Scorched Earth

If there's a right way for a woman whose ex-lover is awaiting execution to act, I don't know what it might be.

Of course, if there was a right way for a lover to act, he never knew it either. Eren Tristram is a dog—in all senses of the word. A thief, full of false promises, willing to walk away at the first opportunity.

Yet we are all multitudes. If he was simply evil, maybe I'd have an easier time dismissing him entirely. Maybe I wouldn't have difficulty avoiding his eye—a poisonous risk for a high profile performer headlining his execution. If I'm not careful, I could easily find myself executed alongside him.

The world has changed so much in my centuries of life. I'd like to think it's simply lost innocence, or the ebb and flow of tensions across places and dimensions, like rain moving from clouds to puddles and wells, but it has the feel of something else entirely. My bones ache with a sense of danger—something beyond simply the throbs and pangs of post-performance strain and the cost of my blood magic.

Perhaps it makes me callous, being the type of woman able to dance at a lover's execution. Perhaps it makes me cruel. But I wasn't the one who fired the opening salvo in our war—I simply will be the one to finish it.

He's out there, sitting with the Highland pack's leaders even now, waiting for me to make my social appearances. Under other circumstances, I'd pity him—forced to keep a straight face as he sits next to the people who have sentenced him to die. But his fate is of his own making. His impetuous nature took him a step too far, and now he must reap his downfall.

The Highlands are simply the pack who have called him on his bad behavior. Forcing him to play polite with them is an act of sadism. I almost enjoy their commitment to it, as much as it also seems like an act of masochism on their part, too.

So though I was raised to be a diplomat and a huntress, I find myself hiding. Not from the awkwardness—but from him.

I retire to my room, pleading exhaustion. And to be fair, my skin does feel like I exfoliated with a carrot peeler. But most of it is simply that I don't feel like playing the Highlands' political games, let alone facing Eren. I don't feel like playing a part in a story that, for me, ended centuries ago, when Eren conned me with promises of love.

I stole my family's treasures and ran away—only for him to take the precious antiquities for himself and his brother, and abandon me to disgrace.

My family disowned me, my clan exiled me. I lost everything, and he built a prestigious underworld empire off everything I had given him, becoming a warlock of some repute—all using the tools that should have been our legacy. He and his twin Reza got the Well, a powerful home built into a pocket dimension that amplified their power a thousandfold. I got homelesssness, starvation, and centuries of insults.

Centuries have allowed the wound to scab over—but never to heal.

In my cozy rented room, I fill the bath and sit in it, arms wrapped around my knees. With the privacy to cry, I suddenly can't. The tears are stopped up inside me, choked off like a wine bottle corked, fermented, the pressure inside it building and churning.

As kind as it was for Calanthe to come down to perform with me on the second night of the Festival, it took more out of me than I wanted, trying to acknowledge something that honest in front of that many people. Normally, I enjoy performances that touch on mental illness—a theme of particular resonance to beings whose lifespans stretch so long that a single flaw in their psyche can become a gaping chasm if not addressed properly and quickly. How many demons have been driven to madness by their own unaddressed predilections?

How many years did I spend wishing I had the courage—or cowardice—to end it after Eren left? When I returned to the village, crying? When my mother met me, having detected my essence on the crates that had housed the artifacts intended to buy our tuition with Dalila? When she crossed my name from the registers that contained the name of everyone in my family, stretching back generations? When my sisters saw my shame, saw me cast into the streets, feathers plucked from my hair, tattoos inked over to make it clear that I was one of the Sun's Children no more?

I bite my lip at having to even think the name of the twins' old teacher, the double-crossing crone who twisted them against me.

I sob into my knees, overcome. That feeling of emptiness, rawness, I'd have thought it would have faded in the intervening centuries, but somehow, it hasn't.

Because of Eren, I lost everything. I felt things I never thought I could. I almost walked into the desolation of Limbo, certain suicide for anyone other than an incubus—and even for many weaker incubi.

I swallow. He deserves to know. He deserves to know exactly what he did to me. He doesn't get to die without understanding exactly the kind of man he is. And Pack Alpha Highland did give me permission to visit his prisoner, amused by my animosity toward Eren...

I stand, water streaming down my body, and unplug the drain with my foot. A quick toweling, a dress over my head, and I'm ready to go take advantage of the Highlands' newfound lenience with me.

I shiver in the cold, running across the frozen ground in my bare feet. I slip through the door, and nod at the woman standing watch tonight. Here to see your prisoner, I say.

She nods. I was warned you might be in. Go on ahead.

I walk down to the cell. Eren looks up at my approach. I hoped you'd be in. Let me guess. That was about me, too.

I swallow. I thought I wanted to lay it all at his feet, but...now I'm not so sure. "Why didn't you stand up for me? You just let her walk all