The characters and events portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Printed by Ann James Publishing, February 2021
Copyright © Brandi Elledge, 2021
www.brandielledge.com
Cover and interior design by We Got You Covered Book Design
All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution or reproduction is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of the publisher.
This one is for Cole and Caity.
I honestly can’t think of two humans that I like more. Someone could say, “Oh I saw those two flying amongst the clouds surrounded by rainbows and halos. They were truly magnificent beasts.” And I would be like, “Yep, sounds about right.” Love you two more than any dedication could ever reveal.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Continue the Story
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
House of Hybrids
House of Agony
House of Ash
House of Indestructibility
House of Clocks
House of Ice
House of Force
House of Deception
House of Strength and Fury
Houses of Remembrance
House of Chaos
House of Gills
House of Spirits
House of Aerona
House of Joy
Carrying another bucket of water from the creek to my small village shack, I glanced up the hill where the majors from the House of Ash lived. Not for the first time, I cursed them. What I wouldn’t give to have indoor plumbing or electricity. That wasn’t the life that I was meant to live, though. Apparently, my lot in life was one of squalor.
For the last fourteen days, I had been working in the House of Ash, and being behind the scenes gave me even more reason to hate them. When nasty, soulless people had everything, it really resonated a deep loathing down in my soul for them. At least I was out of the fields, and the blazing sun was no longer my enemy. Then again, being around the unrivaled all the time made me miss the fields.
With every degrading word they whispered toward me, I began to miss the hard soil and the way my hands would bleed from picking the prickly vegetables. With every chuckle at my expense, I began to miss the sweat running into my eyes from the long fourteen-hour shifts. I missed my old job because it was familiar and I knew what to expect. It had been hard work in a bitter environment, but I knew I would go home in one piece. I couldn’t say the same about the House of Ash.
Even though we made more money working in the house, at the end of the year, we would have to pay more coin in taxes that we would then owe them. I wasn’t certain we were really getting ahead.
However, my best friend, Raven, had been convinced that she was better than digging in the dirt all day and had scored a job cleaning at the House of Ash. Then she had somehow managed to get me hired, too, going from farming the land to scrubbing toilets. Oh yeah, we were definitely climbing up the social ladder.
I kicked a rock out of my way as I balanced the bucket. I really should try to suck it up for my best friend. These last two weeks, she had been on cloud nine. I would never forget the look on her face when she had told me that we were going to be working for the royals. She had been so happy to be out of the damn fields, and so I had pasted a smile on my face for her, even though I had been mortified.
She didn’t realize that people like us never mixed well with people like them. For starters, they weren’t even people. They were the unrivaled.
We were human. Humans could only be workers. That was our lot in life. We didn’t get fancy titles like the unrivaled, and we didn’t have powers that could scorch humans on the spot with just a flick of the wrist.
Honestly, I didn’t know what she was thinking wanting to be that close to a house. There was always unrivaled coming in and out of there, all day long. We were too close to the fire … literally.
I dodged a few children who were running up the dirt path as I carried the heavy bucket. The young girls giggled as they had whatever fun they could find before their day started. In our world, even children worked, but at that age, there was still hope. Hope for a better tomorrow.
I remembered the age when I had lost hope for a better tomorrow. At the age of twelve, the realist in me had known that tomorrow would be no better, but we could pray that it would be no worse. Unlike Raven, who was always looking for a way for us to escape this world.
Part of it was she wanted a better life, and the other part was she enjoyed dancing with the wilder side. In this world, the wilder side was the unrivaled who would rather kill us than dance with us. Her lack of fear was exactly why we were now working in the House of Ash.
I tightened my hold on the heavy bucket. I had been pretty upset with her for the last two weeks. She had made a major decision without even talking to me about it. She just didn’t understand that working in a dirt field was a safer place to be than working in a house. She had these grandiose ideas that the unrivaled and the humans would come together in unity and all prejudice, hatred, and hard feelings would disappear. She was completely insane to think that history could just be erased. The world had been like this since way before we had even been born, and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
A hundred years ago, there had been a second civil war that had started in the Americas then spread to the rest of the world. At the time armies had been deployed to help control the civil unrest. Then a scientist had developed a serum that would make the soldiers faster, stronger, and improved their cognitive abilities. Turned out that the serum did more than just give them super speed. It had created a different breed of human that were no longer … human.
In our area, which used to be the state of Florida, we had our fair share of unrivaled. The unrivaled who were known to have extreme powers were considered majors. Those were the ones who could destroy a nation. They had done it once, during the Second Civil War, when ninety percent of humans hadn’t made it, all because of the majors. They had been the tipping point between the humans who had guns and other weapons, and the unrivaled who had power but were weaker than the royals. The majors had sealed our fate.
The water sloshed over the rim and hit my shoes. Today just wasn’t my day. I hated my life. I had been told that hate was a strong word, that you should never use it unless you mean it. I could guarantee that I meant it.
I placed the bucket on the wooden table in my three-hundred-square-foot home that I shared with Raven. We were both orphans and had lived together since we were twelve. To say we were self-sufficient would be an understatement.
I wiped the sweat from my brow as Raven came into our shack. Her face was beet red, and I could tell by the scowl on her face that she was pissed. There was only one thing that could make Raven mad. With this knowledge, I began to laugh.
“Oh, shut it, Thorn.”
I cocked a hip against the table and waited until her mumbling died down
so I could ask her what had happened.
Raven’s long, skinny arms flapped beside her in agitation as she paced in front of me. She really did look like her namesake.
Orphans always got named by the majors. So unoriginal, like everything else they do, they always picked a name that looked like the child. It didn’t matter if the kid already had a name. They would erase the name from the ledgers and give them a new one; one that they thought suited them better. Since my best friend was tall and lanky and had jet-black hair and brown eyes that were almost just as black, a major had named her Raven at the age of four.
I had been an infant who had been found floating down the river, Moses-style. There was no known knowledge of my parents or where I had come from. Since I had been hungry and puny, I wouldn’t stop crying. Rumor had it that some joker in the royal family had named me Thorn because they’d found me prickly. Over the years, the asinine jokes on that name never got old. Not!
Assholes, every single one of them.
I watched as Raven kicked our only stool across the room.
“Hey now,” I said. “If you break it, then neither of us will have a place to sit. Why don’t you calm down for a second and tell me what’s bothering you?”
“The unrivaled, that’s what.”
I knew it. Getting a job in the House of Ash had been a horrible idea, but Raven always had to test the waters.
“Of course. But what have they done now?”
“I’m pretty, right?”
I nodded.
Her eyes roamed over me, and a look of disgust crossed her face. “I mean, I’m not you, not that anyone would know you are attractive under that disguise you insist on wearing, but I can still turn heads, right?”
I creased my brow. “Where is this coming from?”
My mostly confident friend stopped pacing and really looked at me. I could tell she was five seconds away from crying as she took a shaky breath. “You are going to be so mad at me.”
My heart dropped. Had she taken our rations for the week again? It was only Monday. What the hell would we do?
“Raven, what did you do?”
She wrung her hands. “Remember how you didn’t want to work at the House of Ash?”
I nodded again.
“And you know how you said it was too dangerous for us to work in their house under their gazes all day, but I vowed to you that I would keep my head down?”
“Yes …?”
“Well, I slept with one of the unrivaled.”
I shook my head. “Nope. No, you did not. I don’t want to hear this. Are you crazy?” I suddenly yelled. “Why would you do something so dangerous?”
Tears streamed down her face. “He told me he loved me.”
I tried not to show my anger. “Raven, we have been working there for two weeks; how in the hell do you think someone could fall in love with you in fourteen days?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe I was just hoping that it was true.”
Now I felt like kicking the stool. “You can’t go back there.”
She tilted her chin up. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say that.” I tried to reel in my anger. “What I am saying, though, is this will not end well. People like you and me don’t belong with the unrivaled. And if anyone were to find out, then we would be in deep trouble. They would have you whipped. Do you remember Mary? Fifteen years ago, she had an affair with a young unrivaled, and they gouged her eyes out. We need to get you off their radar. As long as the unrivaled forgets about you, which he will as soon as he gets a new plaything, then, and only then, will you be safe.”
When she gave me a look, my heart dropped and my palms started sweating. I knew my best friend better than anyone. I knew with certainty that she was about to make my life harder.
“Thorn, after I slept with him yesterday, I remembered I forgot my apron in his room. I went to claim it, but he had someone else in his room. I heard them through the door. He said I wasn’t much to look at, but I got the job done.”
I was battling a fine line of choking her and consoling her. How could she be so stupid? And was she really more upset that some jerk was cutting on her looks than how she left evidence in his room? Evidence that could have her whipped or killed?
“Even if he doesn’t report me, when they find my apron with my initials on it, then it’s only a matter of time before they come looking for me. They will beat me or”—she sobbed—“they will take my eyes, like pitiful, old Mary.”
Raven was a year older than me, but I was the one who always seemed to be taking care of her. She was also the tall one at five-foot-nine. I was five inches shorter than her, but I drew myself up.
“No, that is not going to happen. I’m going to work today by myself. I will somehow get your apron back for you, and then, maybe I can figure out a way to get you fired. Not showing up to work your shift will probably do the job for us.”
She threw her hands up. “Then where will I work? We need money to live, Thorn.”
She was right. “Yeah, but you also need your eyes to work. Tell me, who was this unrivaled?”
“Halton.”
I almost fainted. “The head of the house?” Yeah, I screeched it.
She bit her lip and nodded.
This was bad. This was really bad.
“We could run,” she said.
I began to pace the small confines of our shack. “To where?”
There were five major houses in Old America. The first four of those major houses were made up of people who could control fire, water, air, and earth. The last and most crucial house was made up of hybrids. The houses were basically small castles that made a five-pointed star formation across America. The points included the old states of Florida, Texas, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Virginia. There were also minor houses scattered across Old America, but the minors weren’t as feared as the majors. All of the humans, like myself, who had no powers, lived inside of the star-shaped formation because beyond the major houses was nothing but wastelands. So, where could we possibly run to?
I made a mark in the dirt floor of our shack as I thought about how to get us out of this mess. Halton had been genetically bred to perfection. His powers, which he came into by the age of thirteen, were rumored to be the best out of anyone in the House of Ash. At twenty-one, he was one of the most dangerous unrivaled there ever was, and my best friend had to go and catch his attention.
I stopped pacing. “Listen, I’m sure that he has already moved on by now. In a week, he will probably forget your name. If you don’t show up, you will be fired. If we both don’t show up, it’ll look suspicious. We have to figure out a way for both of us to get fired without anyone raising questions. Plus, I need to get your apron back, so I’m going to head to work. I will talk with the head maid in charge and hint that you’re lazy. She will probably have a letter tacked to our door today saying you’ve been fired. I’ll do just an okay job; enough that it will bug her, and then she will probably let me go within three weeks. There will be enough of distance between our times that hopefully no one will think we purposefully got fired.”
She threw her arms around me. “Thank you.”
I patted her on the back.
Over the years, I had stolen food for Raven, took care of her when she was sick, and walked with her to the latrine in the dark because she was afraid of monsters. Life might be easier without Raven in it, but it would also be less eventful. And truth be told, I was starting to get used to her shenanigans.
“The truth is, Raven, Halton doesn’t deserve you, but we live in a messed-up world where he could easily ruin you. I need you to promise me, from here on out, that you won’t associate with the unrivaled. No majors or minors, and definitely not the head of the houses. If they aren’t human, don’t look twice at them.”
She pulled back. “I swear it.”
“All right. Now help me get ready before I’m late to work.”
She knew the ritual. The houses, or at
least the House of Ash, were always acquiring pretty things. That included humans.
Raven thought I was ridiculous, but I insisted on wearing a frumpy-looking shift dress. I always brushed in a little mud to tone down my white-blonde hair then smudged dirt on my cheeks. But, since I had started working at the House of Ash, I had been putting on extra dirt.
Since I had turned fourteen, I had insisted on toning down my appearance. I had seen what the unrivaled did to any human girls who caught their attention. They would use them, humiliate them, and then torture them for being stupid enough to get mixed up with an unrivaled. Raven and I used to shake our heads at the girls who fell for their ridiculous lies, and now here I was, trying to cover up for my friend who had fallen for the ridiculous lie.
I wasn’t Raven. I wasn’t enamored by venomous snakes. I knew better than to go into a house and sway my hips and strut my stuff. If only my best friend would have been as considerate, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I took a deep breath as I smeared on some dirt. Everything would work itself out.
As I entered the House of Ash, the guard at the door wrinkled his nose at me. In return, I rolled my eyes at him. He didn’t have to approve of my appearance. In fact, it was better if what he saw was precisely what he thought of me—a dirty orphan.
I briskly walked toward the kitchen, where I knew the head maid would be. And as soon as she was done lecturing a young girl on preparing the food better, I caught her attention.
The woman looked just like a horse. She had an extremely long face and big buck teeth. I personally thought the royal who had named her screwed up by naming her Daisy. They should’ve named her after a gelding.
House of Deception: The Unrivaled Series Page 1