Page 1 of Wings of Ashes
PROLOGUE
The Resurrection
Nix jerked awake,blinking in utter confusion as she…breathed.
She had just died. Horribly. Graphically. Painfully.
So, why the hell was she awake like the whole thing had been a dream when it was morbidly real?
Why the hell was she waking up in her childhood bedroom that had burned down years ago?
Why am Inaked?Nix thought to herself,And why are my legs shaved?She had not been able to take a luxurious bath in warm water, let alone shave her legs, in years.Not since he put me in that cage.
Wait… Her skin was unmarked. Looking down at her naked body, Nix gaped and ran her hands over herself. Where were the burns and cuts and scars she had grown used to? The ones that stung even after they healed.
Every inch of her was smooth flesh.
Was this the afterlife? Jumping up from the bed, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair was…blonde.My hair has not been blonde in years. Not since…
Gasping for breath and fighting a panic attack, Nix yanked the door open and stumbled into the hallway, then the living room.
Elle, Nix’s best friend since childhood—the one who forced her parents to adopt Nix when Nix’s parents were never found—fought over a book with Elle’s handsome older brother, Adar.
“Why can’t I use your old textbook for my class? You’re my older brother, you need to be good for something,” Elle complained, trying to pull the book from Adar’s grip.
Gods, it had been so long since Nix saw Elle. So long since Nix saw anyone but her torturer. Had she…traveled through time?
“Get your own book.” Adar’s low, enchantingly smooth voice rang out, shoving Nix into a sense of sentimental reminiscing.
Adar. He was just as handsome as she remembered him. Wavy golden locks of hair curled around his angelic face. In the past, Nix had always had the biggest crush on him, though he was technically her older stepbrother. He did not see her as anything other than another little sister.
Elle snapped, tugging harder on the textbook. “Did you draw dicks in it or something? Why won’t you let me have it?”
“It has my notes in it from last year. I don’t want you to be accused of cheating.”
Textbooks. Classes. They looked…young. At least six years younger. Like…when Nix, Elle, and Adar were all in their early twenties, attending Alatus Academy, the academy for winged creatures between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.
Nix had been twenty-six years old an hour ago, locked in a cage, and bleeding out in front of her torturer. Now, she seemedto be in her past, in her twenty-year-old body, as though the last six years had never happened.
Overwhelmed and feeling faint, Nix shouted, “What the fuck?”
She stood there, fully nude, in front of her best friend and her young adult childhood crush.
Elle’s attention tore away from her brother, Adar, as she looked over at Nix, wide-eyed, and shrieked, “WHY ARE YOU NAKED?”
1
CHAPTER
Nix had no explanation for it. She wondered “why,” but Nix did not care to question it.
I’m free.I’m…back.Back to six years earlier.
Whether it was all a fever dream from being bled out too much by her captor or an actual fated gift of a second chance at life, Nix was back to being twenty, six years before her eventual death—murder.
Less than two years before her capture and torture and… She shivered and looked down at her arms and legs again.No marks.
Could she really start over? Knowing what she knew about her future, could she try to change it?
