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    The Flickering Flame
    The Flickering Flame
    The Flickering Flame
    Ebook73 pages1 hour

    The Flickering Flame

    By Alyce Caswell

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    About this ebook

    Grace Pendergast is a disgraced reporter with blood on her hands. She thinks the galaxy would be better off without her. But before she can take drastic measures, she encounters Finara, the goddess of fire, who offers Grace the opportunity of a lifetime. Finara might be the most arrogant woman Grace has ever met, but the goddess has a softer side that she has managed to hide from the entire galaxy for millennia. Until she enlists the services of a particularly stubborn reporter, that is.

    As sparks ignite between them, Grace finds herself struggling to choose between carrying out her original plans — or accepting an eternity at Finara’s side.

    An F/F novella.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlyce Caswell
    Release dateOct 20, 2018
    ISBN9780648162643
    The Flickering Flame
    Author

    Alyce Caswell

    Alyce Caswell, when she isn't buried in a book or drinking her way through a giant pot of tea, is a keen writer of fantasy and science fiction. Her space opera family saga, The Galactic Pantheon Series, has been released digitally through various retailers.

    Read more from Alyce Caswell

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      Book preview

      The Flickering Flame - Alyce Caswell

      The Flickering Flame

      by Alyce Caswell

      Copyright © Alyce Caswell 2018

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

      Cover design by Hampton Lamoureux, TS95 Studios © 2018

      Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

      ISBN: 978 0 6481626 4 3 (EPUB version)

      ISBN: 978 0 6481626 5 0 (Amazon version)

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      About the Author

      Also by Alyce Caswell

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘Full disclosure: yeah, I look pretty hot, but I come with baggage. A whole galaxy full of baggage. I also happen to be the goddess of fire which I understand is a bit of a deal-breaker. You mortals tend to want a marriage that lasts a lifetime, not an eternity. You’d get immortality out of it, but then you’d have to stay with me until the end of time. Shudder.’

      Finara, goddess of fire (the Firine was her official title in the Galactic Pantheon), sat back in the booth and waited for her companion to respond. She lifted her glass, either painted neon pink or containing a viscous material of the same colour, and held it to her lips. The resort’s galaxy-renowned drink, apparently. It had some fancy name but it clearly wasn’t all that important because it had slipped her mind. In her domain there were innumerous planets with unstable volcanoes, flaming lakes and raging bushfires — she couldn’t be bothered to remember every little detail about every little world that fell under her control.

      If the mortals required her immediate attention, she gave it, but never any more than they needed. She looked after them because it was she had been created to do. Finara still wasn’t sure the mortals deserved her assistance — or anything else from her, really.

      Occasionally she indulged in some public fire dancing. It seemed to be the only thing Finara did that merited any adoration from the mortals. She was hired by hotels to perform impossible feats while wearing fun skimpy outfits and then used the money she earned from doing this to visit her favourite brothel, the Enocian Harem. Humans generally refused to supply goods and services to someone who didn’t have any coin-chips to spend.

      When Finara had finished her shift at this particular hotel today, mopping a towel over her forehead, she had noticed a giant vidscreen announcing a bout of speed dating in the bar. It had occurred to her that this would provide a cheaper alternative to the brothel. Her coin-chips could go into other exciting things, like flashy clothes and shiny baubles.

      The human sitting opposite Finara in the booth was an improvement on the previous offerings. This mortal was well above average in height, unlike the others who’d plonked themselves onto the red leather seat in the booth. Finara was quite tall herself, so this woman pleased her immensely. She’d had short lovers and hadn’t found any inadequacies in them, but she preferred their eyes to meet her own instead of her (admittedly ample) chest.

      The mortal woman’s skin was somewhere between bronze and tan, and her brown eyes were dark and deep, as though they held delightful mysteries. And that mouth…large and promisingly sensual. Finara hadn’t seen her date’s tongue yet, but she imagined its length would be more than suitable for her needs.

      Finara should have had soothing hazel eyes, but she preferred to keep them aflame, the fire that obscured her pupils and irises held there by constant concentration. Finara had never managed to darken her olive skin through exposure to sunlight, though thankfully she wasn’t as pasty as Kuja, the rainforest god. Finara had been born with brunette hair, but she kept it black to reveal her permanent mood: rebellious.

      Except her racing off to have sex with mortals hadn’t turned out to be anywhere near as rebellious as what her brothers had done. Sandsa, the Desine and oldest sub-level god, had thrown away his position in the pantheon to be with a mortal woman, however briefly. Then Kuja had challenged the Creator God, their father, pleading for the right to marry the mortal he loved.

      When the Ine (the name Finara and her siblings used for the Creator God) had revealed that his children had been allowed to fall in love all along, this had caused something of a stir among the gods and goddesses — previously they’d gone after and punished any sibling who had dared to look at any mortal for too long. Finara continued to enjoy bedding anyone who was keen,

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