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    Theron's Tale: a Witches of Etlantium novella: Witches of Etlantium, #2.5
    Theron's Tale: a Witches of Etlantium novella: Witches of Etlantium, #2.5
    Theron's Tale: a Witches of Etlantium novella: Witches of Etlantium, #2.5
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Theron's Tale: a Witches of Etlantium novella: Witches of Etlantium, #2.5

    By Thea Atkinson

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    About this ebook

    He knows the spoils of war well...now he's one of them.


    Theron's days of peace are over when a legion of female warriors demand his village's best men as pillage. His good looks and keen intellect catch the eye of the commander. In return for his beloved witch's safety, he volunteers to be taken. Too late, he discovers the women have but one use for men.

    And now it's not just his life at stake, because if he can't give the women what they want, his entire village will suffer.

    Theron's Tale is a novella in the Witches of Etlantium series. It's not light and fluffy, but if you love dark lil ditties, you'll enjoy this expansion on a favorite character.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThea Atkinson
    Release dateNov 30, 2012
    ISBN9781498965446
    Theron's Tale: a Witches of Etlantium novella: Witches of Etlantium, #2.5
    Author

    Thea Atkinson

    Thea Atkinson writes character driven fiction to the left of mainstream; call it what you will: she prefers to describe her work as psychological dramas with a distinct literary flavour. Her characters often find themselves in the darker edges of their own spirits but manage to find the light they seek. She has been an editor, a freelancer, and a teacher, but fiction is her passion. She now blogs and writes and twitters. Not necessarily in that order. Please visit her blog for ramblings, guest posts, giveaways, and more http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com or follow her on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/theaatkinson or like her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Theas-Writing-Page/122231651163413 a special thanks to Tiffany Atkinson for taking my author photo.

    Read more from Thea Atkinson

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      Book preview

      Theron's Tale - Thea Atkinson

      Theron's Tale

      The first of the conquerors came the day I received my first tattoo.

      Theron winced at the memory of the marking all these years later, letting his mind travel the fringes of memory, conjuring up the notion that those days of pain and suffering were better than the moment he lived in now because even if they were hard at that time, they felt like nostalgia now.

      Everything was nostalgia now that the new conqueror had come.

      He eyed the lean man in front of him and blinked away a bead of sweat. The face looking back at him was calm. Free of the sheen of sweat.

      Theron supposed he had nothing to sweat over, really. He merely had to wait. Him with his pale skin and hair, his hooked nose that made him look like a bird of prey. He had all the advantages at the moment, so maybe it was best to frame the whole thing in nostalgia. It might be easier after all, to hear the story of your genesis that way. Origin stories were always wrapped in myth and legend anyway, and when the truth was brutal, the story was even more fanciful.

      A man needed to think he was special, after all.

      This man in front of him, this Yuri, with his impatient air, the brutal hand that wiped at his albino brow with barely concealed frustration, this man would need a tale, a spinning of threads that made the most colorful of wall hangings. Of that, Theron was certain.

      He sighed with longing at the start of the story, drinking in the man's interest like water. Yuri would want the whole thing, and he couldn't have it without knowing the way it began.

      The ending was nothing without the beginning, after all.

      Theron licked his lips. They were so dry. Parched, really, and split from so many things, the least of which was want of water. He might have chuckled if there was anything here to chuckle about. Instead he continued, watching the man's eyes in case his attention wavered. He couldn't have that. He needed the man rapt, and so the story would be fanciful, and it would be detailed.

      And every bit of it would be true.

      My tattoo, he said and shifted just enough to relieve the way the shackles around his wrists bit into his skin. They were heavy things, not too tight to cut off the circulation, but small enough he couldn't slip them over his hands. But he relished the feel. The feel of them reminded him he was alive, and there were times in the last few hours he had prayed for death.

      The marking was painful, I admit. He caught the interested shift in Yuri's gaze at the word painful. No doubt the man thought he was weak. No doubt he thought the pain suffered now would break him, if he thought the marking of soot into his skin was painful. He couldn't help a feeble smile.

      You think a tattoo is nothing but a momentary sting, Theron told him. And perhaps on legs or arms it is. Perhaps in tribes where the mark is but a small thing for decoration. Not in mine. Not on the softest flesh. The flesh of your core, or your underarm.

      Theron felt his legs weaken and he caught himself from letting his weight go, an motion that would make the chains bite down harder. They rattled in his ears as he tried to twist just so, moving sideways as much as he could to let the long swath of markings that went from his armpit all the way down to his hipbone show in the lit of the torch.

      You don't know how it was with my tribe. A tattoo this size took years to complete.  Hours of effort and magic and meditation at each stretch.

      Yuri seemed unimpressed and yet there was a glint in that baleful eye that encouraged Theron. He was caught in the words. Ensnared like a hare in a delicate twine. Good. He had him then. He only had to keep the twine tight enough to hold him, loose enough to make him think he was free.

      My skin at the lowest rib stung like it had been scraped raw and doused with fermented balsam gum, he said. And I suppose it had when you come to think about it. I knew the outline of the first symbol meant clay – our word for the dirt beneath our feet and the soil we'd been formed from, the earth that sustained us. It was the most important symbol of the magic that would be created over the seasons and I knew the outline was as crimson at the edges as the soot that filled it in had been black.

      Theron looked down at his feet, imagining again the henna on his toenails, pretending the veins that stood out so blue against his skin were trails of decorative woad tracing his instep in preparation for a sacred ceremony. He closed his eyes and tried desperately to imagine the woman those things had been done for. The nights they spent together. The seasons they lived with each other. Yes, even the deaths

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