This is two chapters from the first novel I ever tried to write. Please note that it contains adult themes.

I force my keys into the lock and turn, the tinkering claws of Poppy already thrashing on the other side to greet me. My bag hits the laminate flooring with a gentle thud as I scratch behind her ears, the house still smells of bergamot. I call for my mother, and without response, I ...

The smell of fried chicken curled through the thick smog as I rounded the corner in Lowtown Market, and rain thundered against the awnings protecting the vendors beneath them. My heavy black boots clipped against the slick pavements, and I nestled deeper under the hood of my jacket. I liked the city the most when it rained, it felt like it was washing away its dirt and sins. The buildings were too...

“What will you do now?” Jack asked as he wiped the grass stains from his clammy palms onto his cord trousers.

“Go to class,” I responded shrugging, before pushing myself to my feet from the steep bank that overlooked the valley. Rolling green hills were framed by snow-capped mountains, and maple trees blushed ruby under a golden sun. I adjusted the strap of my backpack on my shoulder. I’d...

Paloma stood at the window as she waited in the small study, the lacklustre lace curtains hanging limply either side as condensation fogged the glass before her. She watched a gaslight flicker in the street like a dying star, casting an amber glow across the slick, wet cobblestones. The branch of a birch tree tapped

against the glass pane like a crone’s bony finger, the only shred of nature that w...

“What if we are wrong?” my sister breathes, as the biting wind snaps at her words, throwing the tendrils around her jaw like Medusa’s snakes.

I turn to her, my blue fire gaze meeting her forest green eyes. We are only half-sisters, a shared blood of our mother Athena the goddess of warfare, both our fathers are unknown, “But what if we are right?”

We both swallow, our throats bobb...

She should have gone for sleeves, she doesn’t have the shoulders for a strapless dress.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I chewed at the skin around my nail.

My mother swatted a hand wrinkled like parchment at my own to stop my disgusting habit.

The woman in the row before me blew into a handkerchief like a baby elephant.

I flicked my gaze to the bride once ...

“Your turn.”

A chill rattles down Rory’s spine, and he flicks his long black lashes up to Beth as she frowns quizzically at the cards on the floor between them. He wiggles in his sleeping bag, shimmying further into it before pulling his hat down over his forehead. The torchlight flickers, and Beth glances down at it from her own sleeping bag.

“Do you think your parents are asleep...

The fates had not written such an ending.

And yet Suliena lay in the street, the ground slick with rain as her blood ran in red rivulets between the grey cobbles.

She’d heard Nyx cry her name only seconds before the world fell silent around her.

As she tumbled to the ground in slow motion, voices and screams muffled like she was locked tight in a glass box, their movements as though they were u...