Free The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) by Travis Simmons

daughter. The neighbor’s dog wasn’t something she wanted her daughter around. There had been too many reports of the mutt attacking people. She couldn’t take the chance that they were only rumors.
    Her daughter skipped back across the street toward Shirley. She relaxed back in the chair, looking up at the cloudless sky and basking in the warmth of the winter day. It was unseasonably warm in the Holy Realm today, and she was taking advantage of it before the extreme cold of mid-winter set in and chased her indoors for months.
    Confident that Lily was out of trouble, playing with something in the snow, Shirley turned back to her book and kept reading. Quickly she was drawn back into the adventure and romance the pages of the book promised. A smile spread across her face with every page she turned.
    She hadn’t realized how much time had passed until darkness started to fall. With a sigh, she marked her page and looked up to her daughter. But there were people in the street, pointing up at the sky. A cry went up from farther down the street, and Shirley watched the crowd thin as people ran to their homes, shutting themselves inside.
    “What in the Realms?” Shirley said. But before she could look back up, Lily screamed out in pain.
    The book fell from her lap and into the snow as she trampled over to her daughter. “What happened?” Lily was holding her hand to her chest, so Shirley struggled it away from her and looked at the festering bite.
    Shirley saw the thin strand of white mucus on her daughter’s thumb and reached for it, but it was too slick for her to get hold of. The tendril spasmed and slipped out of Shirley’s grip, vanishing into Lily’s thumb.
    Lily whimpered.
    “It’s okay,” Shirley said. “Come on, let’s get inside.” She helped her daughter to her feet and steered her toward the door of their house.
    But they weren’t to make it. Overhead the darkness condensed, and the sound of clattering wings accosted her ears. Shirley stopped and looked up as the plague of locusts descended on the small town of Terranceville. She batted at them and stumbled through the biting insects. She pulled Lily along behind her, and her daughter stumbled with her mother, screaming at the fire each infernal bite brought to her flesh.
    Shirley could relate. She felt the bugs biting, nesting into her skin, wriggling their way in deeper. She fell to her knees, pushing her daughter before her and toward their house. Lily had to live, even if Shirley didn’t. It was that thought that prompted her to her feet. She grabbed Lily and darted toward the house.
    They never made it. Within seconds the town was decimated under a swath of locusts. An hour later, the town in ruin and all of the people dead, the locusts moved on.
    As the sun was setting that evening, Shirley began to move once more. This time not with life, but in death. Her body shuddered, jerked, and yanked up into the air, listing to the side, her footing unsure in her death. She turned south-east and began walking.
    Soon the entire town had reanimated and were lumbering along behind her, one thought shared among them, urging them forward, calling them to their destination: Lytoria.
     

High in her tower balcony Mag was afforded a glorious view of the city’s sparkling lights, the towering heights of the mountains, and the constant rush of the waterfall. From the street below, the evening bustle swelled up to her ears. In the distance were shouting workers and the noise of their toil. Mag knew she wasn’t shuttered in this out-of-the-way room because she was an honored guest, but instead she was under a kind of arrest. Guards were posted at her door, and her balcony had no way of escape, unless she wanted to plummet a couple hundred feet to the cobbles below.
    If she had access to her wyrd she could have flown perhaps, lightened the air around her, causing her descent to be slowed. But she didn’t have access to her powers. The iron bands around her throat