Beyond the Ever Reach

by Everly Frost

  Beyond the Ever Reach

  Mortality Book One

  Everly Frost

  Contents

  Prologue

  I. Freak

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  II. Terminal

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  Assassin’s Magic Series

  Assassins Menace

  Also by Everly Frost

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Everly Frost

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead are purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Atelier Droeven

  For information, contact www.everlyfrost.com

  everlyfrost@gmail.com

  For Ben

  But Eve turned from the serpent

  and did not eat of the fruit.

  And for her obedience,

  she was allowed to reach out her hand,

  take from the tree of life and eat,

  and live forever.

  Evereach Origins, Second Edition

  Prologue

  PEOPLE SAY that at the beginning of time, Eve made a choice. She turned away from the serpent and the tree with the forbidden fruit, and she left them both behind.

  They say that her reward was to eat from the Tree of Life and when she did, we became invincible. Our bodies changed, our healing capabilities increased, and we could no longer be killed.

  But I don’t think it was when she swallowed the first bite or even when she told the serpent to get lost.

  I think our world changed when Eve decided who she was.

  And now, as this monstrous man pulls the ropes off my body and holds out his hand, offering me the one thing that can save me, the one thing that can keep me safe, now is when I’ll make my choice.

  Now is when I decide whether I’ll fight or give in. Now is when I decide who I am.

  Freak

  Chapter One

  I NEVER COULD watch anyone die.

  Tricycle wheels flipped through the air. Brakes shrieked and metal crunched. The kid’s trike rattled all the way across the road and hit my foot. I froze at the curb in front of my house, school bag sliding off my shoulder, vision filled with the spinning wheels. I told myself to walk away, pretend I hadn’t heard the smash or seen the boy go under the vehicle. I should shrug it off like I was supposed to.

  I should ignore the impulse to help.

  I bounded around the broken bike and sprinted to the car in the middle of the road. A little arm extended from underneath the front fender, palm up, motionless. Biting my lip, I sank to my heels, wishing his fingers would twitch, fighting the tears that welled behind my eyes.

  First death.

  It always took one death to find out how fast someone was going to heal. The boy’s fingers were flushed pink, regenerating, but the stillness of his hand told me he wasn’t a really fast healer. I guessed it would be at least another half an hour before he was fully conscious again.

  The silence was heavy after the squeal and crash. I hovered, not sure if I should pull him out.

  I hated my brother for leaving me behind. If Josh had driven me to dance class like he was supposed to, I wouldn’t be here now, staring at first death and not knowing what to do. I’d be going about my day like normal. No, I reminded myself. Today was not an ordinary day. Today was Implosion.

  The driver emerged from the car with annoyance on her face. I flinched as she slammed the car door. Another woman ran from a nearby house, screaming into a phone. She raced to the driver and gave her a shove. “That’s my son! I’m calling the Hazard Police. You’d better be insured!”

  The driver threw up her hands and backed off, slumping against the side of her car, clicking her fingernails together, and tapping her heels against the pavement.

  I knelt down to the boy as his mother continued to yell into the phone. She paced up and down the road, her voice shrill. “How long will it take to get a recovery dome here? What—you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m already late for work.”

  Wisps of his blond hair touched the side of the wheel like yellow cotton candy, all floating and soft. I wondered if his soul floated there too, inches above the hot road, waiting to get back to his body. I was glad I couldn’t see the rest of his head.

  Before I touched him, something zipped past my shoulder.

  The drone circled up and back, swinging close to my ear. Shaped like a metal cross no bigger than my hand, it skimmed the air in front of the car. Beneath the hum of its four miniature rotor blades came the chatter of shutters. It was taking shots of the damage: the boy’s hand, the wheel, a piece of tricycle jammed under there with him. Assessing the situation and relaying the information twenty miles west to the nearest Hazard Police station.

  The drone flitted from spot to spot, whirring around the car straight toward the driver, hovering and clicking, transmitting her image back to the police. The kid’s mother was next before the drone flew to me. A pinprick of light struck my eyes, and I stopped still, waiting for it to take the shot and move on, but the clicking stopped.

  I frowned as the mechanical chattering died. Instead of taking my picture, the drone floated, paused for the first time. I stared back at it, waiting, a feeling of unease spreading through my chest.

  Someone grabbed my arm.

  My elderly neighbor, Mrs. Hubert, wrenched me to my feet, a pair of pruning shears wavering in her other hand. The camera clicked behind me—just once—and I imagined the blur of my body captured in the image. Before I drew breath, Mrs. Hubert’s strong grip propelled me several feet from the car. Her long braid—a sign of her age—slapped against her thigh as she strode away from the accident, taking me with her.

  “Come away, Ava. You don’t need to get caught up in that.” She flicked her head in the direction of the scowling driver who looked as if she wanted to strangle someone. I guessed she didn’t have insurance, after all.

  “But, he’s still under there…” I threw a confused look at the boy’s mother. She still hadn’t checked him.

  “Everyone deals with first death differently. You need to get used to it if you want to get through Implosion tonight.”

  Implosion. When I find out how fast I heal.

  She tugged on my arm again. “Besides, the Hazard Police will be here soon. They’ll take care of him.”

  Behind us, the info drone returned to the crash as Mrs. Hubert urged me further away from the accident. I picked up my bag and tried to forget about the child.

  Mrs. Hubert opened her gate and went back to pruning her rose bushes as if nothing had happened. The shears snapped. Petals floated to newly mulched earth, bright red on brown. “Go on. There’s nothing more to do here.”

  I forced myself to focus. If I didn’t hurry, I’d miss dance class completely.

  It took me twenty mi
nutes to rush to the dance studio downtown, which made me ten minutes late. Dance was part of my schooling and counted as the first two classes of my day. Luckily, the studio was located just a few blocks up from the school. As I puffed toward the café below the studio, I slowed for a moment to breathe in the normality of people drinking coffee, the crackle of open newspapers, and the soft jumble of conversation. No more broken bike and tiny hand.

  Approaching the corner of the building, I gave Lucy, the owner of the café, a quick wave. She’d offered me a waitressing job over summer holidays, which was perfect because I could head upstairs to dance practice after my shift. She returned the wave with a bright smile. With her olive skin and dark brown hair, Lucy had the kind of complexion that hinted at a Seversandian heritage. My own features weren’t far off: brown hair, brown eyes, and skin that was a shade darker than pale. There used to be free movement between our country, Evereach, and the country across the sea, Seversand, but not anymore.

  I took the stairs two at a time, raced past the poster I normally drooled over—an ad for the Conservatorium, the most prestigious dance academy in all of Evereach—and launched myself through the door.

  Inside the studio, students were moving away from the warm-up bar into the center of the room. Ms. White towered at the head of the dance floor, her reflection tall and straight in the mirror behind her. “Hurry up, class! Selections for the Conservatorium are only six months away and I won’t accept dawdling because summer’s here.”

  I ran to put my bag down, searching the group for my best friend, Hannah. I caught sight of her pale blond head among the other students, shining like the first ray of sunlight that morning. She threw me a questioning look as Ms. White pointed me to the warm-up bar. I rushed through my stretches and positioned myself at the back of the room, focusing on the new routine, until Hannah maneuvered her way over to me.

  “Where were you?”

  “There was a car accident. One of my neighbor’s kids got hit.”

  Her eyes glazed over. The boy’s death wouldn’t matter to her. It shouldn’t matter to me.

  “And Josh hates me, but what’s new.” I leaped, twisting my body mid-air and landing on my feet, to spring upward again.

  Hannah dipped away, and when she moved back, she edged closer so we could talk. “Are you ready for Implosion tonight? My mom was all mushy about it this morning, it was embarrassing.”

  I forced a laugh. “Yeah, my parents not so much.” Mom had taken me shopping for a new dress in all black so it didn’t show the blood. Black wasn’t compulsory and Josh had told me that some kids at his Implosion ceremony the previous year wore white, but those were mostly the religious kids, and they framed their Implosion clothes afterward to remind themselves about faith. I only had Josh’s word for it, since only adult members of the family were allowed to attend the ceremony and it wasn’t televised. Other than the dress shopping, my parents hadn’t talked about Implosion much, as though it wasn’t important that I was becoming an adult.

  After tonight, I’d be allowed to grow my hair past my shoulders—but only about half an inch, since the length of our hair had to match our age. And I’d be allowed to drink. And move out of home, except only the really fast healers did that since they were offered paid Hazard training while they completed their last year of school. I figured I’d be stuck at home for the next year, but Josh was heading to college after summer holidays.

  “So, what about Josh? He’s going to the Terminal tonight? I heard it’s going to be a massive fight.”

  My stomach clenched and I missed the move Ms. White was demonstrating. Josh had begged to go to his graduation party, but our parents insisted he come to Implosion with me. “Dad said no.”

  “But all the graduates are going. It’s the last time they’ll get to kill each other.” The lightness was gone from her voice. “He has to be there.”

  I shrugged, but the nonchalant gesture was a lie. How could I tell her that the very idea of the Terminal made me sick? That my heart hurt every time I remembered the little boy under the car.

  That the thought of Implosion—of being killed for the first time—made me shudder so hard I couldn’t breathe. Hannah hadn’t died before either, but I knew she didn’t feel the same way.

  I said none of those things as Ms. White’s voice drowned out my thoughts, beating out a warning with a finger pointed firmly in my direction. “Concentrate, Miss Holland. Or I’ll have to send you to school without your Extra-Curricular Pass.”

  Hannah flicked me a quick, apologetic glance and I ducked my head and willed my body to obey the music, to turn when it should and leap when it should. Finally, I lost myself in rhythm and movement and the quiet that always fell over me when I danced.

  When we arrived at school, it was morning break and students crowded the halls. I pushed on the doors just in time for someone to release a wash of flyers advertising the Terminal.

  A familiar giggle told me that Sarah Watson posed against the nearby wall. Her nail scissors glinted as she tilted her bleeding ear, showing off how her blood didn’t even drip before her skin healed.

  Fast healer.

  I rolled my eyes and turned away before the inevitable face sucking with her latest conquest, but I was surprised when it was Michael Bradley. He had Sarah hanging off his arm as if she was an extension of his elbow.

  “Remember when we said we’d never be some guy’s accessory?” Hannah grabbed my hand with her eyebrows way up in her hair. “That’s the one guy I’d make an exception for. Do you know he’s never lost a fight at the Terminal?”

  Josh didn’t say how fast Michael healed at Implosion the previous year, but I’d heard he turned down Hazard training. I guessed, if my dad were part owner of the Terminal, I wouldn’t bother with a job either.

  Sarah caught my eye before I could pretend to look somewhere else. “Hey, Ava,” she said, looking me up and down from my regulation-length short ponytail to my leggings. “Been to dance class? Seems like a waste of time to me.”

  She turned away before I could reply, but Michael gave me a nod, a strangely serious acknowledgment of my presence, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. I frowned at him as Hannah pulled me along. “Pfft. She’s just jealous. Besides, did you know she’s a third child?”

  “Truly?” When I turned twelve, Mom had given me “the talk.” At the end of it, she’d told me that our bodies can only have one child, maybe two and that was a good thing because people lived for so long. Otherwise, the world would be overpopulated.

  Hannah drew me into the swarm of students. “Did you see how fast she heals? She’s probably a Basher.”

  I glanced back at Sarah and Michael as they disappeared into the milling students. The Bashers were terrorists who hated slow healers and threatened to bury them alive. Members of the Basher gang were always fast healers. They went to extremes to keep their identities secret, always wearing full camouflage gear, and nobody knew who their leader was, but their message appeared in graffiti sprawled on the corners of billboards or across the sides of buildings: Bury the weak.

  “Do you think it’s true what they say about the Basher cells underground?”

  “That they bury slow healers alive.” She screwed up her face in disgust. “The police seem to take it seriously, but I don’t know. Sounds like a scary story.”

  “I don’t understand why they hate people who don’t heal fast.” I struggled to say the words “slow healer.” It was insulting to label someone that way.

  Hannah shrugged. “I heard they think slow healers make us look weak, vulnerable; everything we use Implosion to prove we aren’t.” She smiled and bumped my shoulder, trying to lighten the mood. “Hey, if I turn out to be a slow healer tonight, you’ve got my back, right?”

  I attempted a smile as she pulled me down the hallway. Heading to class, I checked the steady stream of students for my brother. School was finishing early in honor of Implosion—I had only two classes left—and I didn’t trust him to wait to give me
a lift home.

  As soon as the final bell rang, I raided my locker, hugged Hannah, and raced out to the parking lot.

  Josh was already opening the driver side door as I ran up. “Hey.”

  He didn’t answer, settling behind the wheel with his hair blending into the cracked black leather seat. He pointed at me and then to the passenger seat.

  I raced around to the side and dropped into the seat, just as his best friend, Aaron Reid, appeared, his hair tousled and full of gel. He drummed his fists on the hood of the car and shouted at Josh through the windscreen. “See you at the Terminal, buddy!”

  He signaled to Josh, put a finger to the underside of his chin, and pretended to pull the trigger. Josh mocked a slit throat in return. A ghost of a smile crept onto my brother’s face as he revved the engine and slammed the car into reverse. Josh drove faster than the speed limit, but I picked my battles.

  I chose my words carefully. “Aaron seems to think you’re going to the Terminal tonight.”

  His jaw flexed and there were murky stains under his eyes that made him look hollow. “So what if I am?”

  I took a deep breath. It wasn’t because I didn’t want him to go to the Terminal—as much as I couldn’t stand the idea of people killing each other with swords or guns or drones, or whatever new thrill the Terminal came up with. I didn’t want him to miss his graduation party either. But he’d been through Implosion before. He knew what was coming.