Burned

By Shayla Morgansen

Sometimes we are forged in fire. Other times we are burned.

Three years before the events of Chosen, Emmanuelle is a new White Elm councillor in a stagnant, overlooked role. When she and Peter are finally sent on their first assignment together to assist in crisis relief for a bushfire raging in Australia, she begins to find her voice and purpose – and Fate’s.

All proceeds of this ebook will be donated to WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service) and their efforts to rescue and rehabilitate wildlife affected by the Australian bushfires.

This short story ties into the YA/NA fantasy series The Elm Stone Saga.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shayla Morgansen
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463517192

Shayla Morgansen

Hi! I'm Shayla, and making stories is the basis of everything I love and do. I write lengthy books about magical happenings in ordinary places, and the supernatural crossing paths with the everyday. My favourite themes to explore in these fantasy story worlds are interdependency, found families, us-against-the-world, and a good helping of angst.At home in Brisbane, I'm a wife, a happy little hermit, and a mum to our two adorable white cats. In my working life, I have been a schoolteacher, an editor, an assistant publisher and a lecturer.

Book preview

Burned: An Elm Stone Saga Prequel Tale

Published in Brisbane, Australia

www.shaylamorgansen.com

Copyright © 2020 Shayla Morgansen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Sabrina RG Raven

www.sabrinargraven.com

Also by Shayla Morgansen

The Elm Stone Saga

Chosen (2014)

Scarred (2015)

Unbidden (2016)

Haunted (2019)

Circa 2003

How often does reality fall desperately short of expectation? You study endlessly, practise ruthlessly, work yourself half to death trying to prove worthy of admission to a legendary magical council, thinking it will make you feel worthy and powerful. You impulsively light fire to dry underbrush at the edge of your family’s struggling farm thinking it will make your harried and distracted parents take notice of you and end the distance between you, somehow solving a number of more complex problems.

Instead, Emmanuelle Saint Clair had discovered she still felt as small and purposeless as she had before the White Elm council had accepted her, and she gathered the teenage arsonist responsible for the destruction of several acres of beautiful Australian bushland was learning the difference, too, between expectation and reality.

In fairness, her friend Peter Chisholm said in that mild way of his, accent apparent even in her head, in response to her furious judgemental thoughts, no one’s asked why he did it, and he probably didnae intend it to get out of control.

Je vois. I suppose that excuses the result, does it?

He didn’t answer, only nudged her leg with his under the table when the council’s high priestess, Lady Miranda, looked their way. They were seated around the large conference table in her co-leader Lord Gawain’s legal office in Dublin, having been called in for an emergency circle. Normally the thirteen of them met only once a month, a lengthy and usually tedious event of minute-taking and listening to the older, more experienced, more worthy councillors as they updated the rest on the tasks they were allocated last month. Emmanuelle was the youngest member of the council at only twenty-one, and joining it had been her ambition since she was twelve. She’d tried other things, nursing, aged care, even started medical school, but none of it had fit, and she’d flunked out of all formal qualifications. None of it had started to explain the magic that she experienced when she healed others. And she’d known, always, that she was meant to stay on the path of magic that her long family line of French witches had walked. She was magical. She was gifted. This was not to be lightly thrown away. She’d pictured herself stepping up to a glorious plate of purpose, changing the world, helping hundreds or even thousands, refining the raw skills she’d spent her adolescence honing, and she’d thought she was walking into a dream when she