Embrace the Fire Read Online Free

Lincoln's song was, it wasn't enough. She and Lincoln were trapped.
    The men closed in until Kinna could see the whites of their eyes. She knew she should be running, fighting, doing something, but Lincoln's voice was overwhelming. In a dream, she watched the men slow, their cries dull, their weapons drop.
    A bone-shattering roar exploded the ranks. Hard, bony scales bit into Kinna's ribcage, wrapping around her torso as she jerked into the air with Lincoln beside her. Higher and higher, they soared into the night sky, and the circle of men below them grew small.
    The dazed soldiers released a roar of outrage as Lincoln's voice abruptly cut off, but they were too late. Chennuh clutched Lincoln and Kinna in his invisible talons, carrying them on the wind toward safety and freedom.

Chapter Two
Ayden
    A yden stretched his hands in front of him, interlocking his fingers and twisting backward before shaking them hard. Scorching heat seared his hands, racing up his arms to his shoulders. He couldn't control the fire in his veins. At least it wasn't constant, but the same burn had filled his limbs several times since he'd bestowed the Amulet on King Sebastian four months before, and thus broken his curse.
    He could touch living things without watching them dissolve to ash now. But the pain of this new, strange heat was difficult to handle when it appeared. Even so, pain was easier to bear than destruction.
    He clenched his fists until the blood fled from his knuckles, but the burn remained.
    Ayden took a deep breath and looked at the dusty scrolls that lined the shelves, the guttering candles that decorated the tables. The place smelled of ancient papyrus and decaying parchment.
    Each of the Clans of West Ashwynd had a library containing scrolls that documented the history of their own people and creatures, but the best, most complete library was located in The Crossings where Ayden could not go. The next time he saw Sebastian, it would be on his own terms. He'd searched the scrolls in the Troll Havens and the Ogre Swamps. None of them had the information he sought. He had his doubts about the Dryad Dells' library, one of the more provincial Clans, but he had to try.
    He held his hands to his face, blowing cool air across the burning skin, finding little relief. He stepped toward the shelves, and began paging through the scrolls.
    “Amulet. Amulet,” he murmured as he searched for the familiar markings. A scroll toward the back caught his attention, and he pulled it out, blowing the dust from it as he carried it to a nearby table.
    He pulled the parchment back, listening to the satisfying crinkle of age and decay, and scanned the markings. It wasn't written in the common tongue, but rather in pure Lismarian. Ayden had fled Lismaria as a boy of eight, and his understanding of the language was basic at best, but he could make out most of the words.
    A phrase leaped off the page:
    The Amulet, cast by the Seer Fey, or the Ancients as they are sometimes called, was wrought within the fires and by the Stars in the time of Aarkan the Firebringer as a symbol of the oath that sealed the three races together: Dragon, Man, and Fey.
    Ayden pulled his hands back to his lips, blowing cool air over them as he continued to read.
    ... The Amulet contains the power of the Stars, manifested in four Touches—opposing extremes of fire and ice (representing the earthly elements) and ash and healing (the healthy life and death by decay, or the divine elements). The splintering of the Amulet's power can result in the split of the earthly elements, or even occasionally the divine elements. The power splinter only happens when more than one being is present. If the Amulet splits its powers at such a time, one individual will receive either a Touch manifesting in fire and the other manifesting in ice. The same would hold true with the divine elements of Ash and Healing, although occasionally, it has been known to only apportion one or the other of the