The Ivy House: Curse Breaking: The Ivy House, #3

By Katherine Kim

Does Dain know enough magic to save a child's life?

Dain has been studying hard since the run-in with his brother's friends. His mysterious familiar Ax assures him that not only will he protect Dain, but the forest itself will also, but Dain feels that it wouldn't hurt to be ready on his own. Naturally, as soon as Ax tells him that the forest will keep out unwanted visitors, a man stumbles up to his door, clutching a young child and begging for help breaking the curse that is killing her. One look at the pair and Dain leaps into action, but with no experience at all with curses and a literal deadline looming, can he learn enough to save her life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katherine Kim
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215897430

Book preview

The Ivy House

THE IVY HOUSE

CURSE BREAKING

KATHERINE KIM

The Ivy House: Curse Breaking © 2021 Katherine Kim. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at [e-mail]

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, or events is entirely coincidental.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

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Cover by Gage Ullman

Editing by Robin J Samuels

CONTENTS

Map

Curse Breaking

Author’s Notes

CURSE BREAKING

The summer passed quickly, it seemed to Dain. He and Ax built a small shed that now housed a goat and a few chickens, and Ax prepared the ground behind the house for a garden while Dain studied and practiced. Once he had mastered several simple spells, he set about thinking of applications for them beyond the obvious practice drills laid out in the texts.

The shelves themselves seemed to be enchanted so that they held far more books than they looked like they should. Usually, they held books on the topic he was seeking, but sometimes he wandered over with no real plan, just curious, and the shelves held a staggering selection of odd and wondrous volumes.  He started reading ahead in other books, learning more about history and nature and famous mages. He also came across several books that made him feel uneasy to touch and sick at heart to read.

One afternoon after finding another book that made him uneasy, Dain set it down and went to the door and called out. Ax? Are you near?

There was a moment of quiet before a distant cawing and the rush of images of the woods from above alerted him to Ax's location. A few