CLAIRE DAVON

Excerpt

The battlefield was strewn with bodies. They littered the broken landscape, the shattered trees and warped ground evidence of the intense conflict that happened there. Dark patches marked where blood soaked into the soil. Body parts and viscera scattered around the corpses in a field that had once held flowers, and grass, and now was a wasteland.

Natasha had survived the day of bombardment and fighting, but she was one of a very few. Simon hadn’t been so lucky. Her brother in all but heritage had been blown up right beside her, strafed into pieces by a grenade that they hadn’t seen coming.

Now he was part of the remains of the battle, lost to her by the veil of death.

He would not want her to try to carry out what remained of him at the risk of her own life. They were practical folk and not subject to religious beliefs that would dictate such a foolish action. They eked out their hardscrabble lives in the face of constant need, with little time for anything other than finding their next meal, and shelter.

She would mourn him when she was safe from this place. First order of business was survival, then and now. Natasha had lost track of where she was, and the broken bits of what had once been one of her country’s border towns didn’t give clues.

No matter. She had the sun and her wits, if no water or food, and would figure it out. She always had in the past, but in the past, it had always been her and Simon together.

Now she would have to go it alone.