Katya is in love with Azovka, the Mistress of Copper Mountain. Katya's fiancee Danilo dares carve Azovka an impossible flower of stone. They witness the ruthlessness of the Romanovs and clutches of corrupt Bailiffs in the Ural Mountains, where Azovka's Copper Men have ruled since they were first mined out of Mount Azov. But when Azovka begins to turns to stone, Katya fears the worst - and that Danilo will follow Azovka to a Hell of malachite shadow. With Baba Yaga's guidance, and the magick in her veins, Katya must save them all! retelling of pavel bazhov's "the stone flower"
"Yekaterina, work at your needlework!" Teacher Alina snapped. I was gazing out the window onto the bustling town of Podentsky, a mining metropolis in the thick of the Urals fifty miles from Yekaterinburg, my namesake. I watched copper-tinged snow fall. It was winter, 1910, and I was seventeen years old. The Popovas, our regents – we knew no tsar in the Copper Lands save Tsar Nikolai's despicable Bailiff – graced our mountains with mineral and vegetative bounty, but everything here was tinged green as crabapple ice. Even the emerald snow.
I giggled, braiding Azovka's black hair. It had streaks of green and cinnamon striated like veins of ore throughout. She was my dearest friend.
"What a vision you are!" I crooned, ignoring Teacher Alina. I tugged lightly at Azovka's hair and twirled it round my thumb. Azovka smiled, her malachite eyes and scaled legs shining in the oil lamplight. Teacher Alina trimmed the wick as Azovka practiced her algebra.
"Use the malachite hair tie," Azovka whispered, smiling secretly. She drew a band of copper from her purse and enchanted it to be a ribbon as fine as the tsarina's silk. You could find malachite like that – a gown – in sheets at Snake Hill. Azovka, the Mistress of Copper Mountain, liked to grow it like Japanese bonsai trees. She had whole gardens of gems, below the Urals in her Copper Mountain.
I ooohed and ahed as my classmates looked on in fear. The townsfolk treated the Popovas with awe and superstition. But Azovka was my friend – though immortal. I trusted the Copper Men in a way Prokovitch the Stonecutter did not. I confided in Azovka like our Landlord Peter swallowing dirt from Mokosh before striking a rent deal – a holy bond. The mining men, they said the Copper Women were their deaths. But to me, Azovka was life.
"Okay, Azovkalisha," I cooed, my blonde hair and ruddy fat cheeks – I was plump as a partridge, with muscles from hunting and lifting heavy stones for father – shining in contrast to Azovka's slim elegance. I tied the living stone around her hair. It was any day in Podentsky. It was all there would ever be.
We played P'yanitsa, what Americans called War, and our old playing cards had green crowned lizards on them with maiden's faces and brown braids – the Popova family crest.
"Ha!" I said, triumphing over Azovka's queen with my king of hearts. "I've stolen your heart, Azovkalisha."
"It has always belonged to you, my bosom friend." She said, then winked. "I'm hungry, Katya," Azovka whispered, fingering her freshly plaited braid. The malachite ribbon snaked like her lizards around her copper-black tresses. We bundled up in our dresses, malachite belts, kerchiefs, elk boots and white fur coats and ate lunch down by the stone works. The grain mill churned in the river'd distance, and horses and buggies rode through the crossway, carrying iron, copper, malachite, semiprecious stones, and even the rare diamond or sapphire – all guarded by vila militias. Dedushka always warned me to stay away from the vila – the storm spirits would suck you dry.
Azovka's nanny Rubenya, a crinkly Copper Woman, had made us white borscht. We ate it with some ham sandwiches Azovka had fixed. Azovka had spent all night with the dough – she really liked to bake. We dipped the rye bread in the soup from the thermos. Our mothers had both died in childbirth, and my father, Stepan Petrovich, was the captain of the Copper Guard, an ancient order of warrior miners that served the Popovas.
Alina and her father Alexei Popova needed minerals to survive – the finest Yakutian diamonds, jade from China, topaz from Brazil. The Copper Guard ran a vast network exporting the Ural Mountain's riches past the Malachite Gates and importing minerals from abroad. They let the rest of the world in past their diamond swords. My dedushka was a quiet man, a man of action – I was the only talker.
"Here, Azovkalisha – I picked this one from the river," I smiled, handing Azovka a tumbled moissanite.
Azovka's eyes brimmed with tears. "Why are you so kind to me, my Katy?" she said fondly, taking a bite with her pearly teeth. They cut the gem like butter, and the lizards that always thronged by her feet thrummed with excitement. Azovka's scales foiled. Her eyes turned black as she absorbed the mineral's essence.
"Because, Prokovitch the Stonecutter said that someday, you will be my dearest treasure – more precious than malachite to the Copper Kingdom. And I always liked pretty girls – I am ugly, dearest Azovka! I need a polished best friend to harp up my strengths when it comes time for us to wed some awful, belching husband. Ah, dedushka has his eyes on the Landlord's son: stinky, ugly Mikha. Blech!"
We skipped around her lizards, hand in hand, then fell down into the snow, laughing, and made green angels out of the cloudy powder. It cushioned our fur jackets. Azovka stuck out her tongue. "Not the pimply, doughy landlord's son. I think you'd do well with a stonecutter like old Prokovitch."
"Hey!" I smiled, pulling at her embroidered mittens. "He is 53!"
"A joke," Azovka said, her peacock eyes brimming with mirth. "Promise me you will never leave me for a boy, Yekaterina."
"I do."
We swore on Mother Mokosh, the earth goddess', skin, swallowing and spitting out some red clay, crossing our arms, and throwing her lizards into the air.
"May I have some food?" a willowy voice came. Azovka and I froze, caught in the act of sisterhood. It was a tall, gaunt boy, with a mop of dusty blonde hair – a beggar in tattered clothes. But he had soft blue eyes, and he reminded me of Ivan Tsarevich chasing a Firebird.
My heart dropped. He was the most beautiful creature, save Azovka, I had ever seen. "Sure," I said, offering the beggar the rest of my rye and borscht.
Azovka smiled. "What is your name, stranger? I am princess of this town. Someday, I will become Queen of the Copper Mountain."
The beggar hungrily tore into the bread. "That's nice I guess."
Azovka folded in on herself, blushing.
I tapped the boy gently on his elbow. "You should bow down, fool."
"I am older than you. You look like childish maidens. I'm eighteen. Girls are the foolish ones."
"You don't look old," I said.
"Whatever," Azovka sighed. She made the lizards crawl up his legs. The boy just smiled and kissed one. "Weirdo," Azovka replied.
"What's your name, beggar?" I asked. I wanted to clip this stranger's wings and keep him. Fatten him up with my blinis. Make him pierogis and borscht. Ask him to stay. Just like I had Azovka. They were both horribly broken. I wanted to fix them.
All I could do, though, was ask the wanderer's name.
"Danilo," he said. "Someday, I will be famous."
Azovka smiled. "For what? Begging? I am already famous."
"Spoiled, maybe," Danilo said obtusely. "Look at the malachite on you."
"I am the princess, I told you!"
He winked. "Titles don't churn butter." Danilo toyed with a lizard. "Things are changing beyond the Malachite Walls. Rasputin rides. I fled St. Petersburg to find a better life – rode the rails to here, last stop past Yekaterinburg. Outside the Malachite Walls, beyond the reach of the Copper Guard – no one even dares think what kind of magick lives in the Copper Kingdom, with the Copper Men. May I meet you two here for lunch tomorrow?"
Azovka and I shared a look and smiled. "Sure," we said in unison.
He smiled back, a bright wound of red.
"Ask Prokovitch on Georgin Street for a place to stay. He's in need of a shepherd. You look fit for that, beggar boy," I said with all the love a seventeen-year-old girl could tease the object of her desires with. I liked the dirt on Danilo. I liked his dreaminess and odd charm.
Azovka just stared at her lizards. I liked that about her too.
And thus began the winter of our lives.
Three fated lovers: a shieldmaiden, a Troll Queen, and a Valkyrie. One price: the fate of all Midgard. Turiel is crown princess, but from the outlawed Northern Holds, bloodbound to Troll Queen Jarngrimr, and best friends with the stablelass Yolanda, her first love - until her poison kiss turned Yola into a Valkyrie, and whisks Yolanda from Turiel's grasp. Now, Turiel has been stolen into wily Queen Jarngrimr's realm, with only the goddess Skadhi and Yola - back from the dead! - to guide her. Lussi, the Snow King, craves a bride - and it is Dia's troth alone. Dia, the last blood mage from the line of the Isa, is all that is left of Turiel's legacy. Dia has been raised as Lussi's Magdalene - his ritual Bride - and ritual Slayer - for the past three years. Every Winter Solstice, Lussi can die, and Dia must kill him. But as Dia falls deeper into Lussi's sexy web - and in love - her heart is on the line! Other works and Ko-Fi: linktr.ee/avnelson
Death has a mate - a teenage girl, the Grim Reaper's Bride. All Callie has known is that someone watches her in the woods - Samael, the Grim Reaper. Drawn into his intoxicating web of desires, secrets, and shadows, and hating him with a burning passion - can these two unlikely heroes stop the Apocalypse? Or will Samael start it for love?
The Frost Demon Morozko, Prince of Russia's immortal land of Buyan, has waited ages for a mate. And she is Stravinksy's fabled Firebird - incarnated as an orphaned witch! Cast out by the King of the Ice Kingdom, Morozko wanders Buyan, a Miyazaki haven for cherti, nechist, and witches - but a dark curse plagues the land - Koschei the Deathless. Can this bastard prince and the young human girl Anya that conniving Baba Yaga gave Morozko to raise with his found family of cutthroat spirits stand a chance against the immortal sorcerer King Kaschei, who has trapped Anya's soul in the Deathless realms, in gardens of dead wives? Anya is burgeoning with power, living a double life between Cold War Russia and D.C., and coming into her own as a witch to rival Baba Yaga. When her newfound love for Morozko is at stake, she will risk it all to follow the darkly tempting Kaschei to the Deathless lands, face the travails that put all Russia in peril - and save Morozko, as much as he saves her. With epic love, sorcery, adventure, treachery, a Slavic inn for spirits, and plenty of blini warm by the fire, come read this daring journey, and find out if an immortal love can withstand death Himself!
Mom, Dad, Help! - I'm Mated to the Alien Alpha! Ziggi Moondust Collins is a manic pixie dream girl that went on a bender and never recovered. At least, that's what her bandmates think. Pink-haired with a moonbow on her butt, Ziggi is your average punk barista searching for meaning in suburbia. Too bad her artistic roommate Cyrus. He's experimenting on her, manipulating Ziggi's genome in order to accelerate humanity's evolutionary conga line. Oh yeah, and he's been at it for centuries, meddling with human biology so long the Sumerians started a religion after him. At least he makes a mean fettucine alfredo? After a concert goes sour, Ziggi and Cyrus blast off into space in Cyrus' VW Beetle when Ziggi tries to turn off the radio. Stranded on a spaceship suited for amphibians, not punks, Ziggi learns that her new tenant Cyrus, real name Lahmu, isn't remotely human! Gone are Lahmu's good looks, replaced by beautiful tentacles - he looks like a sexy sewer mutant! Lahmu is the heir to the Milky Way's dysfunctional overlords, the Anunnaki: shapeshifters who feed off information. In order to sexually mature, Lahmu has to shepherd humanity into his parent's galactic dictatorship via good old genetic manipulation - and taking Ziggi to bed! Galactic pirates, space rock bands, and tons of hot and heavy tension between an Alien Alpha and his Chosen Mate abound!
He tipped his baseball cap. The stranger's grin revealed bits of crumbs. "And you are...?" I noticed the checkered scarf around his neck. "Hermes." "The brand?" "The man." He sent dancing fingers through the air in a snazzy salute. "G'morning, sweetheart. Loved the sandwich." "Apparently," I mumbled. "So, how did you get in? The doors are locked, and I didn't hear any breaking glass." I looked him up and down. "Get lost on the way to a toga party?" Maybe he was a crazy frat bro. "My life's a party - I bring it with me, or steal Dionysus' thunder." He sipped from a chipped coffee mug, then ah'ed appreciatively. "By Jove's hairy derriere, what a drink. Wine pales in comparison. To the gods of old, and young days long since gone." He wandered into my dining room. "We don't love them til they're gone." My eyes convulsed. "Sorry, but who did you say you were?" I looked at his hands. They were tapered like the fingers of an artist who smuggled on the side. His eyes bespoke whimsy. Looking at this stranger was, in fact, like taking the first, dangerous bite of a melty grilled cheese. "Hermes: the man, not the scarf," ___ My George Foreman grilled cheese was so unholily good, it summoned the Greek God Hermes! Now, I'm on an epic quest to save my father Prometheus from the clutches of Zeus, and restore Hestia's temple flame to Olympus with the fabled Prometheion flower my beloved father Prometheus spent his life hiding. But with the Titans plotting, Cronus rising, and Zeus as dastardly and cunning as ever, all enemies to Hermes and I, can the sexy Messenger God and I make it through, or will I become the ultimate Human Sacrifice?
Being dumped by my mate, Ethan, on my dream New Year cruise tour was bad enough. Watching him swap spit with Vanessa? Absolute hell. Enter Lucas-the cocky, sinfully hot hockey Alpha-who claims I'm his mate. But he doesn't want love; he wants revenge, proposing a fake relationship to rile Ethan. Now I'm stuck sharing a suite with the guy who has secrets of his own. Christmas and New Year on a luxury ship was supposed to be magical...not a steamy, chaotic mess. What could go wrong?
"Ahh!" She was in a moaning mess. She did not want to feel anything for this man. She hated him. His hands began to move all over her body. She gasped when he pulled down the back chain of her dress. The chain stopped at her lower waist, so when he zipped it off, her upper back and waist were exposed. "D-Don't touch m-ummm!" His fingers rolled around her bare back, and she pressed her head against the pillow. His touches were giving her goosebumps all over her body. With a deep angry voice, he whispered in her ear, "I am going to make you forget his touches, kisses, and everything. Every time you touch another man, you will only think of me." - - - Ava Adler was a nerdy omega. People bullied her because they thought she was ugly and unattractive. But Ava secretly loved the bad boy, Ian Dawson. He was the future Alpha of the Mystic Shadow Pack. However, he doesn't give a damn about rules and laws, as he only likes to play around with girls. Ava was unaware of Ian's arrogance until her fate intertwined with his. He neglected her and hurt her deeply. What would happen when Ava turned out to be a beautiful girl who could win over any boy, and Ian looked back and regretted his decisions? What if she had a secret identity that she had yet to discover? What if the tables turned and Ian begged her not to leave him?
“You need a bride, I need a groom. Why don’t we get married?” Both abandoned at the altar, Elyse decided to tie the knot with the disabled stranger from the venue next door. Pitying his state, she vowed to spoil him once they were married. Little did she know that he was actually a powerful tycoon. Jayden thought Elyse only married him for his money, and planned to divorce her when she was no longer of use to him. But after becoming her husband, he was faced with a new dilemma. “She keeps asking for a divorce, but I don’t want that! What should I do?”
"You're mine, little puppy," Kylan growled against my neck. A soft gasp escaped my lips as his lips brushed my skin. My mind screamed at me to push him away-the Lycan Prince who had humiliated me again and again, but my body betrayed me, leaning into him before I could stop myself. He pressed his lips against mine, and his kiss grew more aggressive, more possessive as I felt my legs weaken. What was I doing? In a split-second, I pulled away and slapped him hard across the face. Kylan's eyes darkened, but the smirk on his lips exposed his amusement. "You and I both know we can't fight this, Violet," he said, gripping my wrist. "You're my mate." "And yet you don't want me," I replied. "You told me you were ashamed of me, that l'd never be your queen, that you'd never love me. So please, accept my rejection and let me go." "Never," he whispered, his grip tightening as he pulled me closer. "Soon enough, you'll be begging for me. and when you do-I'll use you as I see fit and then I'll reject you."
Janice, the long-forgotten legitimate heiress, made her way back to her family, pouring her heart into winning their hearts. Yet, she had to relinquish her very identity, her academic credentials, and her creative works to her foster sister. In return for her sacrifices, she found no warmth, only deeper neglect. Resolute, Janice vowed to cut off all emotional bonds. Transformed, she now stood as a master of martial arts, adept in eight languages, an esteemed medical expert, and a celebrated designer. With newfound resolve, she declared, "From this day forward, no one in this family shall cross me."
There was only one man in Raegan's heart, and it was Mitchel. In the second year of her marriage to him, she got pregnant. Raegan's joy knew no bounds. But before she could break the news to her husband, he served her divorce papers because he wanted to marry his first love. After an accident, Raegan lay in the pool of her own blood and called out to Mitchel for help. Unfortunately, he left with his first love in his arms. Raegan escaped death by the whiskers. Afterward, she decided to get her life back on track. Her name was everywhere years later. Mitchel became very uncomfortable. For some reason, he began to miss her. His heart ached when he saw her all smiles with another man. He crashed her wedding and fell to his knees while she was at the altar. With bloodshot eyes, he queried, "I thought you said your love for me is unbreakable? How come you are getting married to someone else? Come back to me!"