What Lies Beyond the Veil by Harper L. Woods EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Harper L. Woods
- Language: English
- Genre: Romantic Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The icy wind of the North whipped through the
gardens at the edge of the boundary, blowing toward
the shimmering Veil marking where the world ended.
Curving and rippling in the breeze, the thin, white barrier
extended as far as the eye could see, until it faded into the
sparkling sun of autumn.
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Blood slid over my skin as I brushed a stray hair away
from my face with frozen, aching fingers, and tried to ignore
the slick, viscous feeling where it coated the skin at my
temple. My hand trembled as I reached back into the twilight
berry bush once more, grasping the round, periwinkle berry
and carefully maneuvering it through the thorny branches to
place it in the basket that hung from my other forearm.
Shifting my body to relieve my aching back from the same
hunched-over position, day in and day out for weeks, I
looked through the branches for the distinctive coloring of
the berries that were large enough for a single one to fill my
palm.
“Faster, Barlowe,
” one of the members of the Royal
Guard snapped at me, making his rounds as he supervised
the harvest. One could never be too careful with the food that
grew in the King’s Gardens, which Lord Byron would send to
the capitol, Ineburn City, to feed the Court through the harsh
winter season. Meanwhile, those of us who remained in
Mistfell year-round were left to suffer and starve, with only
our meager personal gardens to sustain us.
I jolted, expecting the crack of his whip to follow as I
shoved my hand into the bush with a wince. The thorns
caught the edges of my palm, tearing the skin on the pads of
my fingers until the moment when I finally wrapped them
around the soft flesh of the berry.
I pulled it back, depositing it gently into the basket and
grimacing at the way the ruby of my blood stained the light
purple fruit. Lord Byron would make me wash them myself
before he sat me on his lap and fed them to me, as if I should
be thankful for the gift of his attention and the food that was
otherwise forbidden to me.
The thin white scars that covered my hand shone like the
web of the arachne when it caught the sunlight, too pale
against my skin that was bronzed from working under the
sun year after year. I had spent far too many harvests
tending to the twilight berries when I displeased Lord Byron.
Too many summers harvesting the crops that were
considered a delicacy because of the pain the plant wrought
on those who sought to pluck them.
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