Frost (The Frost Chronicles #1)
by Kate Avery Ellison
Publication date: March 28th 2012
Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult
Synopsis:
In the icy, monster-plagued world of the Frost, one wrong move and a person could end up dead—and Lia Weaver knows this better than anyone.
After monsters kill her parents, Lia must keep the family farm running despite the freezing cold and threat of monster attacks or risk losing her siblings to reassignment by the village Elders. With dangers on all sides and failure just one wrong step away, she can’t afford to let her emotions lead her astray. So when her sister finds a fugitive bleeding to death in the forest—a young stranger named Gabe—Lia surprises herself and does the unthinkable.
She saves his life.
Giving shelter to the fugitive could get her in trouble. The Elders have always described the advanced society of people beyond the Frost, the “Farthers,” as ruthless and cruel. But Lia is startled to find that Gabe is empathetic and intelligent…and handsome. She might even be falling in love with him.
But time is running out. The monsters from the forest circle the farm at night. The village leader is starting to ask questions. Farther soldiers are searching for Gabe. Lia must locate a secret organization called the Thorns to help Gabe escape to safety, but every move she makes puts her in more danger.
Is compassion—and love—worth the risk?
Amazon
AUTHOR BIO:
I live in Georgia with my wonderful husband and two spoiled cats. When I'm not writing, I'm usually catching up on my extensive Netflix queue, reading a book, giggling at something funny online, or trying to convince my husband to give me just ONE bite of whatever he's eating.
Learn more about my writing and books at my blog (http://thesouthernscrawl.blogspot.com/), find teasers for upcoming works on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/kateaveryellison), and subscribe to my new releases newsletter to be notified of new novels as soon as they hit stores (https://tinyletter.com/kateaveryellison)!
A branch snapped in the woods to my left. I flinched, turning my head in an effort to locate the source of the sound.
But silence wrapped the world once more. The shadows lay still and gray across the snow. Empty.
“It’s still light,” I whispered aloud, trying to reassure myself. In the light, I was safe. Even the smallest child knew that much.
The monsters didn’t come out until after dark.
I moved faster anyway, spooked by that branch snap even though a blue-gray gloom still illuminated the path. A shiver ran down my spine. Despite our often-repeated mantras about the safety of the light, nothing was certain in the Frost. My parents had always been careful. They had always been prepared. And yet, two months ago they went out into the Frost in the daylight and never returned.
They’d been found days later, dead.
They’d been killed by the monsters that lurked deep in the Frost, monsters that barely anyone ever saw except for tracks in the snow, or the glow of their red eyes in the darkness.
My people called them Watchers.
Color danced at the edges of my vision as I passed the winter-defying snow blossoms, their long sky-blue petals drooping with ice as they dangled from the bushes that lined the path. They were everywhere here, spilling across the snow, drawing a line of demarcation between me and the woods. Every winter, the snows came and the cold killed everything, but these flowers lived. We planted them everywhere—on the paths and around our houses—because the Watchers rarely crossed a fallen snow blossom. For some reason, the flowers turned them away.
Usually.
I touched the bunch that dangled from my throat with one finger. My parents’ snow blossom necklaces had been missing from their bodies when they were found. Had the monsters torn the flowers off before killing them, or had they even been wearing them at all?
Another branch snapped behind me, the crack loud as a shout in the stillness.
I hurried faster.
Sometimes we found tracks across the paths despite the blossoms. Sometimes nothing kept the Watchers out.
My foot caught a root, and I stumbled.
The bushes rustled behind me.
Panic clawed at my throat. I dropped my sack, fumbling at my belt for the knife I carried even though I knew it would do no good against the monsters because no weapons stopped them. I turned, ready to defend myself.
The branches parted, and a figure stepped onto the path.
It was only Cole, one of the village boys.
“Cole,” I snapped, sheathing the knife. “Are you trying to kill me with fright?”
He flashed me a sheepish smile. “Did you think I was a Watcher, Lia?”
I threw a glance at the sky as I snatched up my sack and flung it over my shoulder once more. Clouds were rolling in, blocking out the sun. The light around us was growing dimmer, filling the path with a premature twilight. A storm was coming.
His smile faded a little at my expression. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have called out to warn you.”
“We’re supposed to stay on the paths,” I growled, brushing snow from my skirt. I didn’t want to discuss my irrational panic. I’d been walking the paths through the Frost my entire life. I shouldn’t be jumping at every stray sound like some five-year-old child.
Cole pointed at two squirrel pelts dangling from his belt. “Quota,” he said simply, adjusting the bow hanging on his back. He moved past me and onto the path. “Speaking of which, we’re going to be late for the counting.”
“You’re a Carver,” I said, falling into step beside him. “Not a Hunter.”
“And you’re a Weaver, not a Farmer, but you still keep horses and chickens,” he said.
I shrugged, still annoyed with him for startling me. “My parents took that farm because no one else wanted it. It’s too far from the village, too isolated. We keep animals because we have room. I don’t bring them into the village on quota day.”
“The quota master gives my family a little extra flour if I slip him a pelt,” Cole said. He glanced down at me, his smile mysterious. “Besides, the forest isn’t dangerous this close to the village, not in daylight.”
“The Frost is always dangerous,” I said firmly.
Cole tipped his head to one side and smiled. He refrained from disagreeing outright out of politeness, I supposed. Having dead parents usually evoked that response from people. “I can take care of myself,” he said.
I looked him over. He was tall, and he carried the bow like he knew how to use it. He might be called handsome by some, but he was too lean and foxlike for my taste. He had a daring streak a mile wide, and his eyes always seemed to hold some secret. His mouth slid into a smirk between every word he spoke.
Our gazes held a moment, and his eyes narrowed with sudden decision. For some reason, his expression unnerved me.
“Lia—”
“We’re going to be late,” I said, dodging, and hurried ahead.
I could hear him jogging to catch up as I rounded the curve. Here the path crawled beneath a leaning pair of massive boulders and alongside a stream of dark, turbulent water. I scrambled around the first rock, but then what I saw on the other side of the river made me freeze.
Shadowy figures in gray uniforms slipped through the trees, rifles in their hands. There were two of them, sharp-eyed and dark-haired. Bandoleers glittered across their chests.
Cole caught up with me. I put up a hand to quiet him, and together we watched.
“Farthers,” I whispered.
“What are they doing this close to the Frost?” Cole muttered.
I just shook my head as a shiver descended my spine. Farthers—the people from farther than the Frost—rarely ventured beyond the place where the snow and ice began. They had their own country, a grim and gray place called Aeralis, and we knew only rumors of it, but those rumors were enough to inspire fear in us all. I’d been as far as the roads that ringed their land once. I’d seen the horse-drawn wagons filled with prisoners, and the sharp metal fences that marred the fields like stitches across a pale white cheek.
The men crept down to the bank and stared at the dark water. They hadn’t seen us.
Excerpt 2:
My brother Jonn raised his head from the yarn in his lap at my entrance. He looked just like me—lanky limbs, a narrow, shrewd face framed by pale, red-blond hair, a stubborn sweep of freckles across his nose and cheeks like speckles on a bird’s egg. We were twins, and we looked it.
“Where’s Ivy?” I swept my gaze across the main room of the house. Dried laundry draped across my great-grandmother’s furniture, laundry my little sister had been supposed to fold and put away before I got home. A curl of anger kindled in the pit of my stomach—we were barely making quota, the winter storms were upon us, and she wasn’t even keeping up with the basic chores I gave her. She was almost fourteen—she was old enough to do her share of the work.
Jonn raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t seen her all afternoon. I thought she was with you.”
A little piece of my insides froze at his words. Our eyes met and held, and a million wordless things passed between us. I went back to the door and opened it.
Darkness was falling along with the snow. I hadn’t seen my sister in the village, and she hadn’t been in the barn. It was a small farm—just a round clearing in the woods, really. There was no sign of her in the yard. I shouted her name, but the wind snatched the word from my lips and flung it away. The Watcher Ward rattled above me, and the sound was like bones shaking.
My heart beat fast. My lungs were suddenly empty. I took a shaky breath and then exhaled slowly before turning to my brother.
“I’m going out to find her.”
Jonn looked at the fire. I knew he wouldn’t argue with me—he wasn’t the type to voice disagreements, especially not with me—but his whole face tightened and his lips turned white. “The Watchers...”
“It’s too early for Watchers to be out,” I said. “There’s still light left. Besides, nobody’s seen one in months.”
That was a half-lie, as their tracks were spotted almost every week crisscrossing the paths or wandering around the edges of the village where the border of snow blossoms was planted to keep them out. But it was a half-truth, too. We hadn’t seen them recently.
But Jonn and I knew better than anybody that there was still a risk.
“I’m going,” I said.
He didn’t reply, but I could tell by his expression that he was furious that he couldn’t go. He wasn’t mad at me. It was just the way things were. There was no point in wasting time talking about it, so we didn’t.
I pulled on my cloak again and struggled into my heavy boots with the snowshoes for walking on top of the snow. Opening the front door, I threw one final look over my shoulder at Jonn before ducking back out into the wintery evening.
It had grown colder since I’d been inside, or maybe that was just the wind stealing the warmth from my body. I padded through the dusting of snow that covered everything, cupping my hands over my mouth to call her again. “Ivy!”
Most of the time fear was just like a rat in my belly, gnawing and gnawing a hole in the same place day after day whenever I’d let it. But now the rat had turned into a lion, and it was tearing me apart from the inside out. I reached the edge of the yard, where the trees formed a wall of brown and green, and I stopped. The wind shivered through my hair.
“Ivy!” I screamed again.
She was always wandering the farm with a dream in her eyes and a song in her mouth. She had a head full of thoughts about things that didn’t matter and never would, and she didn’t have an ounce of sense when it came to our survival. I wrapped both arms tight around my middle to hold in the fear, and I sucked in another breath to call again when I heard it, lost against the wind.
My name.
