#fridayflash: Flame of the North (excerpt)

I was going to skip #fridayflash this week having been so busy finishing up the novella submission, but I thought I'd give you a sneak preview into my upcoming short story, Flame of the North!

It's a continuation to When Winds Blow Cold, so if you haven't already read that one, you can sign up for my mailing list to get a free copy! 

I'm also going to be giving out free ARCs for review, so stay tuned. =D

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Mica, son of the Sun and Snow, was miserable. His father had left for home two weeks after they arrived and Mica had quickly been absorbed into the rhythm of the castle. Morning until late afternoon was spent in the nursery, where various teachers from the city came to teach him everything from art to science, history to swordsmanship.

When they continued to duel outside in the middle of a snow storm, Mica started to count down to the day he could reasonably expect his mother to come and save him from this insanity. He felt as if every shiver he exhibited was greeted with a great sigh from his grandfather and a disapproving shake of the Steward’s head.

The clothes his mother had made him were not warm enough, no matter how many of them he put on at the same time. He wondered at how he had scoffed when he first saw those clothes! But neither could the best and thickest that the Steward found in all the Kingdom warm him.

Give him time, his grandfather said worriedly in his echoing voice that chilled Mica to the bone.

“Give him time,” the maids said, those motherly souls who worried about the thin shivering boy who had earned the Steward’s disapproving glare. “After all, this is his first winter—and him so used to the warmth of the South!”

So they gave him time and winter passed and spring began. The snows cleared, the flowers bloomed, yet the endless cold, even in spring, made him shiver. Half a year passed and still, he could not accustom himself to the frigid North. He missed the Sun and its cheery grin, he pined for the Sea and the waves and his friends from the deep. The Castle was too big for him; too large for an eleven-year-old boy and his dead grandfather, even with all the servants that lived with them.

More and more, the Steward would find him in the Painted Hall, staring at murals that had once come to life. He looked with longing on the deep blue sea, at the creatures he had called his friends. The great whale rising to the surface to breathe; the schools of fish swimming amidst the wreckages; the dolphin pod frolicking in the sun; the sun itself, bright and yellow and full of the promise of warmth. But the painted hall was truly only painted now. None of it came to life for him as it once had for his father.

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