Love in the Face of Death

By Claire E. Jones

"She needed to leave the ghosts behind and weave a new destiny for herself..."

After losing the last of her family, Kelah must leave her war-torn home and embark on a dangerous and thrilling journey that forces her to navigate the turbulent waters of love and death.

Join her as she survives a shipwrec

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clairjoyance Publishing LLC
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986912820

Claire E. Jones

Existential glitter bomb. Dog mom. Bookworm. Romantic. Nerd. Creative AF. Dancer. Only child. Goof. Introvert. Blonde. Artaholic. Entrepreneur. Clairvoyant. Prochoice. Homebody. Philanthropist. Stoner. Intellectual. Visionary. German. Lithuanian. Welsh. Pansexual. Millennial. Intuitive. Liberal. Humanitarian. Pegan. Pagan. Witch. Anti-capitalist. Seattleite. Former Midwesterner. Pisces Sun. Pisces Moon. Leo Rising. Mercury in Aquarius. Five planets in Capricorn.

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PRAISE FOR

Love In The Face Of Death

This book had it all! Fantasy, adventure, romance and even a little spice! What a journey!

–Becca Longi, beccasbookishlife

An adventurous and touching tale of two individuals destined to meet who both suffered catastrophic losses, yet came together to thwart evil that threatened and found family in the most unexpected of places. Romantic and action-packed, this book will have you sighing with happiness and rooting for the heroine to the end.

–R.J. Castille, author of Goddess

It’s a joy to be taken into a whole new fantasy world. It’s an even bigger joy to read a character that feels like she could be me. Sexy flirting, daggers, magic, and mysterious dangers have me counting down to when I can read book two.

–Rachelle Butts, buchobutts22

In Love in the Face of Death, readers join Kelah on a grand adventure as she learns to embrace her magic and discovers her destiny. Claire E. Jones has built a fully-imagined fantasy world, where our heroine may be tested by difficult challenges, but love is always easy!

–H.P.T., beta reader

Novels by Claire E. Jones

Threads of Destiny Series

LOVE IN THE FACE OF DEATH

LITFODtitle

Published by Clairjoyance Publishing LLC

www.claireejones.com

Copyright © 2022 by Claire E. Jones

Cover Art by Carlos Ortega-Haas

All rights reserved. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.

ISBN

979-8-9869128-0-6 / Hardback

979-8-9869128-1-3 / Paperback

979-8-9869128-2-0 / eBook

Library of Congress Control Number:

2022919290

First Edition / October 2022

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Halee,

for being the

bestest bestie

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Nine

An Interlude

Midsummer

Day Forty-Three

Day Forty-Four

Day Forty-Five

Day Forty-Six

Day Forty-Seven

Day Forty-Eight

A Different Kind of Interlude

Day Forty-Nine

Day Fifty

Four Months Later

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Day One

The throbbing pain behind Kelah’s eyes roused her from a deep, dreamless sleep. Her brows knitted together and her eyelids squeezed even farther against the intense, burning brightness heating the space around her. A groan rose from her raw throat as she raised her shaking hand to her head before a gravelly cough caused her diaphragm to clench and shudder. She stilled as she suddenly became aware of all of the grit that covered her.

Grit between her fingers, grit glued into the creases of her face, grit making her neck, elbows, and knees rub like sandpaper.

Good gods . . . , she choked out.

Coughing a few more times, she rolled over on her side. Briny bile built at the back of her throat as she summoned nearly all of her energy to pitch forward, leaning heavily on her curled left knee. Gasping for breath, some of the grit dislodged from her raw, cracked lips and flew into her mouth.

She immediately spit up, hacking and convulsing as she hurriedly rubbed her hands together to get them clean enough to clear her crusted eyelids. Blinking blearily, she squinted against the golden sunlight. There was sand everywhere; a long strip stretched out in front of her. Raising her aching arm to shield her eyes, she glanced to the right as sparkles blurred in her field of vision. There was dazzling, glittering water as far as her eyes could see.

Sucking in her breath, she attempted to slow the rising panic and confusion. Her blurry gaze swung to the left, seeing the outline of a forest calmly standing beyond the sand.

Her mind raced as she tried to remember, delving into her most recent memories. She had been traveling on a ship across the Metuit Sea, heading west to Islundren to start a new life far away from her home in Souret. There was nothing left for her anymore.

She had tried to stay and make something out of her empty, broken life. But after her mother had silently passed on, the last of her close-knit family to leave her, Kelah finally realized that there was nothing keeping her there. There was no way she would be able to keep pretending that she knew what she was doing, trying to uphold the proud name her family had built over the years. She eventually had to admit to herself that she couldn’t continue living in the home where everyone she had ever loved had left her.

So after three months of failing to make it work, barely scraping by in keeping her all-consuming grief at bay, she had broken one night, suddenly deciding to leave it all behind. It was less of a lightning-quick spark of inspiration than the final drops of liquid that filled the container beyond the rim. The surface of her resolve shimmered, precariously stretching and quivering before breaking forth over the side in surrender.

She was gone within the week, having boarded the Endless Horizon commanded by stern but kind Captain Jessamine Pend with just enough gold stowed away to start all over in Islundren. She had heard stories and read about the ancient but thriving city of culture five days away across the Metuit. She figured it could be an exciting but relatively safe place to reinvent herself. It was a city known for its enduring centuries of intellectuals, studios, theaters, and bastions of the finer pursuits of civilization. Plus, it was a long way from the encroaching waves of war.

Unlike her modest town of craftsmen and merchants with curious, watchful eyes and ears, Islundren was said to be somewhere one could create a new self with no history, no questions asked. It was appealing, the idea of never having to explain why she couldn’t bear familiar sights.

She could forget her brother’s collection of chipped and worn quarterstaffs still leaning in the corner next to their home’s fireplace and her mother’s faded floral dresses still hanging in the armoire. She would never again have to pass by that one hidden nook of the baker’s whitewashed shop next to their window boxes overflowing with verbena in the summertime where darling Tenae had once broken her heart. She needed to leave the ghosts behind and weave a new destiny for herself.

Kelah had been ready when she boarded alongside Captain Pend, her experienced crew, and a handful of other passengers. Settled into her single bunk room, she had mostly stayed out of the way for the first couple days of the journey. They had been blessed with calm seas and mostly overcast skies until dark clouds rolled in at sunset on the second day. The winds quickly became violent and fierce, the sound of thunder rumbling louder as the sun dipped below the horizon. Pend and her crew had ordered the passengers to batten down in their bunks while they handled the ship’s ropes and kept them as steady as possible on deck.

But steady quickly became impossible as the storm brutally broke open above them, the waves and swells increasing in sheer force as well as height. It was as if they were being personally targeted by gods descending their wrath upon them for some mysterious divine reason, throwing the elements into a frenzied ire. Before long, Kelah was being pitched around her small room as the whole ship rose, quaked, and fell in gut-clenching swoops against the waves and wind.

Unwilling to stand by helplessly, she had broken out of her door and started her way toward the main stairs through a steady stream of rushing sea water and rain that poured into the hall. She could distantly hear the frantic shouts of Pend’s crew above the roar of the storm but she couldn’t make out anything they were saying. She had just reached the foot of the stairs and squinted up into the flashing storm of ropes, debris, and rain when the whole ship tilted suddenly to the left.

Her body slammed against the wall and she cracked her head painfully before catching her grip on the handrail. Wrapping her leg around the rail and securing her foot on one of the support brackets, she had clung as the ship started tilting backwards at an impossible angle. Her screech was instantly drowned out by the storm’s rage and her heart pounded as her vision blurred with salty tears. The ship was nearly vertical as the prow crested the top of a massive wave.

There was a breath, a moment in time where everything had slowed as the ship balanced on the crest. One brief pause where Kelah’s innate survival instinct flared and focused like crystal. Her arm was already reaching out to pull herself up the rail as the ship pitched in a free fall forward. Hand over hand, she muscled her way as fast as she could against the force of the gravity buffeting her body. She couldn’t get trapped in this hallway when they hit, that would be certain death.

If she could only make it to the deck . . . 

Using all the leverage she could, she had reached the last couple stairs when she saw the enormous wall of ocean hurtling toward the ship. She sucked in a scream in that split second before the bow compacted with the ocean, splintering into chunks. The force of the collision had jettisoned her body out of the stairwell toward the deck of the ship where she was hit by a fierce, possessive wind that knocked the breath out of her just as she cleared the stairs. It pushed her off the port side, spinning her through the air alongside other dislodged debris. She had glimpsed a few bodies of the crew being tossed, just as at the mercy of the bloodthirsty elements as she.

Her breath came in gasping pants; that was the last thing she remembered.

Perhaps the fates were involved with a twisted omniscient sense of destiny, perhaps the gods had happened to overindulge in a personal vendetta against someone on board, perhaps it was a savage, primordial baptism of rebirth meant to wash their collective grief away, but the fact still stood that Kelah was now all alone on a beach gods knew where.

She turned to look more closely at the forest to her left with desperate suspicion, but it seemed like there were no immediate dangers that she could sense. It was serene and quiet, with the steady rush of waves and the wind blowing across the branches.

The beach stretched out for miles on either side of her with the ocean about fifty feet to her right. The forest consisted of low beach shrubs that gradually extended into a towering canopy of moss-covered trees. There were pieces of ship debris sparsely littering the beach, part of a wooden railing as well as a few piles of soaked, unidentifiable objects.

As the full weight of what had happened bored down upon her, Kelah’s chest ached nearly as much as her battered and bruised body. She stared down at her trembling hands, consciously slowing down her breathing and settling her thoughts. She apparently survived the shipwreck; that was the first step. A very important first step. She dragged her hands down her face and sucked in one last deep breath before letting it out in a long, frustrated exhale.

She had to keep going. There was no other choice. Giving up was never an option. The divine powers that be obviously wanted her alive enough to end up on this beach, and she silently, albeit begrudgingly, thanked them for that blessing.

Sitting up a little straighter, she stretched and cracked her neck to loosen the tension in her shoulders. She started dusting off her loose, lavender, button-down tunic that was sandy, sealogged, and untucked from the pants she had frantically tugged on before finally exiting her room in the storm. She bet she looked like hell, her knuckles torn and stinging and her tangled hair more out of the braid than in. An attempt at swallowing in her dusty and dry mouth turned into a hacking cough as she pushed herself up off her knees and stood up slowly with her hands on her hips, breathing heavily.

She shielded her eyes and peered at the wreckage around her: there was a barrel twenty feet ahead that looked like it was intact. She wobbled a bit in the sand before finding her footing and made it over carefully, her hand pressed against her stomach in an attempt to keep her lingering nausea at bay. The sun was arcing across the eastern sky above the forest as a sweet, warm breeze kissed her cheeks. She had to admit it was a gorgeous day, if you could even notice things like that in a situation like this. Rolling her shoulders, she tried to force her strained muscles to relax a bit.

As she approached the barrel, it looked surprisingly solid and secure with some writing still visible on the side. Kelah tilted her head and read, Ale . . . Wait, Ale?! A strangled moan of joy bubbled out of her.

Oh, gods yes! She dropped to her knees and rushed to check the wax seal over the bunghole cork. It was sealed! That meant she had at least one dependable means of nourishment, even if it happened to be a mildly intoxicated way of surviving.

There are worse ways to get by, she muttered to herself.

Step two - staying alive at least until nightfall. Check.

She took another deep breath and reached for the barrel’s seal, her fingernails barely scratching off the very edge of the wax. She was definitely going to need something sharper and longer.

Glancing around, she squinted at the closest pile of debris another ten feet forward. It looked like a chest underneath a tangle of rope and broken boards. Huffing and pulling herself to her feet again, Kelah started over and circled around until she saw a set of metal clasps on the side of the chest. She pulled the boards off the top, knelt, and opened it. Inside, there was a set of folded, waterlogged capes, a bundle of soaked paper correspondences, a small pouch of gold, and a sheathed dagger strapped to the inside of the lid.

Blessed be, she muttered and closed her eyes in relief briefly before unlatching the dagger. Deeper in the chest, underneath the capes, there was even a thigh strap that she eagerly fitted to her right side. The familiar weight of the dagger felt like a second skin and soothed her frayed nerves. She had intended to grab her own dagger before heading into the storm but apparently forgot in the fog of panic. She had been feeling naked without it.

It was likely this chest belonged to the captain, perhaps her luggage that she kept in the captain’s quarters. Kelah fingered the capes, testing their weight. Squinting up at the sun, she tried to gauge the potential weather she would be dealing with here. The cloaks weren’t too heavy, but they could probably help with creating a partially protected shelter covering.

She smiled tightly to herself. Now that a plan was starting to form, her mind sharpened and cleared. Her breath evened and she leaned back on her heels, feeling a tiny, calming wave of confidence sweep through her.

Her shoulders relaxed as she moved back over to the ale barrel, unsheathing the dagger and prying it into the seal. A few slides and slices later, the cork popped out. She knelt and rolled the barrel over to pour the ale into her mouth. Swishing her first mouthful around, she washed out the grit and spit it on the sand before quickly taking another desperate gulp. It was warm and a tad sour but it quenched her choking thirst.

Kelah eventually let the ale muddle her senses a bit and relaxed into a numb, surface awareness to process everything that had happened to her as her gaze slowly scanned the tree line closest to her. She wondered, for not the first time and most certainly not the last, what would have happened if the war had never come to Cassene all those years ago.

What would have happened if her brother, Lienn, had never volunteered for the resistance effort? Would things have turned out differently? Would she still have ended up on this godsforsaken island?

It was a fool’s rumination, she knew, wishing for a different past. If anything, at least she knew that she was a survivor after all these years. No matter what life had thrown at her, she had always been able to fight her way to the next sunrise.

It was a blessing and a curse, to be the last one standing.

She had never thought that it would be her, at the end. Her mother had been the backbone that kept the family together. But the pain of a broken heart was a force that even the fates themselves feared.

After her father died, her mother had never been the same again. Her iron will had crumbled, both her son and husband now gone to the rages of distant dynastic conflicts between countries. No matter how much Kelah had tried to pour her love into her mother, trying to fill her up with enough will to live, it did nothing to slow her soft and silent decline into death’s surrender.

And thus, Kelah had been abruptly cut free and released from her sweet, familiar destiny in an idyllic version of Souret that no longer existed. Memories from long ago flitted across her mind, images of tears and hugs that were just as soothing as those of laughter and smiles. The scenes of training with Lienn in the courtyard together, in particular, started to clear some of the ale’s cobwebs and reminded her that she needed to patrol and get a better idea of her environment.

That would be the smart thing to do.

She stood with her hands on her hips, gathering her strength, before sighing deeply and heading closer to the forest’s edge to start casually inspecting the terrain stretching to the southeast. The trees were large and imposing with thick curtains of moss hanging from their bows, hiding all manner of secrets behind their veils. It looked like the ground rose sharply into steep hills not far into the forest line. This was, apparently, a rather mountainous island from what she could see with the peak of elevation coming up behind her left shoulder to the northeast in rocky cliffs.

There was the occasional call of a bird that filtered through the hot, midday air while she walked along the edge of the forest. Kelah wiped at her forehead as she continued for a couple of hours, scanning for tracks or anything indicating potential threats. Yet nothing had caught her eye by the time the sun reached its zenith in the sky, burning onto her sensitive, sea-torn skin.

Fortunately, she carried more of her mother’s deeper olive skin tone than her father’s paler, fair complexion so she knew that her skin would recover quickly, but it was probably best to aim for the shade when she could. She dragged her slick palms down the sides of her thighs and desperately wished for a bath as sweat dripped down between her shoulder blades and under her breasts.

Her right hand curled around the hilt of the dagger on her thigh out of reflex, a deeply ingrained habit that was drilled into her by Lienn. He had always been the fighter of the family, training with quarterstaffs when he was younger before graduating to daggers and shortswords as he approached young adulthood. When the first whispers of war had reached Souret a year before the resistance started recruiting, he had intensified his training and agreed to help Kelah learn the basics of defending herself. She had enjoyed training alongside her brother, getting stronger and more agile as the weeks and months progressed. Before long, she could hold her own against Lienn on a semi-consistent basis. He still beat her most of the time but it was no longer a default win; he had to work for it.

He had often reminded her that the odds were always better if you could hold onto your weapon. She slid the dagger out of its sheath, testing the weight and balance in her hand. It was finely made, with precise engraved filigree in the blade itself. There was a smoky gray gemstone embedded in the pommel roughly the size of a chestnut with mother of pearl trimming the handle. She turned her wrist and flicked out with the dagger, mentally and emotionally preparing herself for whatever would come next.

An unexplainable but deep sense of not only survival but triumph hummed in her bones. She knew she would see this through; there was no other option. With no immediate threats that she could sense lurking nearby, she huffed out a tight sigh, sheathed the dagger, and started to head back to the ale barrel.

The sun was quickly approaching the horizon by the time Kelah made it back and hauled the barrel closer to the low-lying shrubs where she could make camp for the night. She gathered some of the ropes and broken planks as well as the capes and tied together a suitable lean-to that was partially hidden from both elements and potential voyeurs alike.

With enough light still left in the sky, she stepped down to the waterline and furtively waded in to start washing herself and her clothes. Once the water was up to her chest, she stripped off her tunic and kept an eye on the distant tree line. She scrubbed her tunic, chest, back, and arms clean of grit and crust before dipping her head back to soak her overgrown dark-brown hair. It was currently streaked with shining tones of honey, gold, and caramel lightened by days spent in the summer sun. Hooking her now clean shirt into her waistband for the moment, her fingers worked through all of the knots and snags in her rapidly dissolving braid. Without the proper soaps, it was proving to be difficult, but she at least managed to wrangle her hair into neater sections for a new braid that kept her hair out of her face.

Tugging her tunic back on, she unstrapped the dagger from her thigh and draped it over her shoulder. She wiggled out of her pants and scrubbed them against her legs to clear them of leftover grit before slipping them back on. That would have to do for now; her options were limited in the realm of personal hygiene. She paused for a few moments to soak in the arguably stunning sunset and brilliant water around her.

Perhaps it was her bone-deep exhaustion or perhaps it was something about this place, but she felt an odd pinprick of satisfaction buzz up her spine. There was a faint energy whispering to her here and it felt vaguely similar to her gift, the blessing that had been hidden in her family tree for generations.

The shadow was what her family had called it, passed down to every daughter in the Makaanis bloodline. It had skipped a few generations with her father, his father, and their brothers; she was told that her great grandmother had been the last one to possess the gift of seeing into the veil before Kelah had inherited it.

She could see spirits and ghosts, the beings who drifted just beyond mortal perception in darker realms. Her family had kept the blessing secret to protect the bloodline. They had told her enough to not be scared of her power but still be cautious of using it in the presence of others. It wasn’t always obvious to others when she used her gift, but her grandfather had always said you never knew what being, mortal or otherwise, may be eavesdropping out of sight.

It was a vulnerable yet exhilarating part of her that she held close to her heart, never letting anyone who didn’t share her blood get close enough to her core truth. A part of her that could warrant her death in certain countries, like Nalliendra who had invaded Frandae with the explicit aim to search out and destroy all of those who were blessed with powers. It was one of the reasons why her family had resisted the war so fervently, trying to protect her from its ravages.

She hadn’t seen any spirits when she patrolled earlier but that didn’t mean there weren’t any here. She concentrated on her shadow as she scanned the environment, sensing a persistent low-grade buzz of energy that she couldn’t put her finger on. It was almost as if there were a very fine energetic net covering everything on and around the island. Somehow, it didn’t feel like a protective force. It felt more restrictive, as if there were currents rolling and pushing for release just under the surface. She tasted it for a moment, considering its strange depth and profile.

As no clues revealed themselves, she exhaled and tiredly shrugged it off before making her way back to camp. She took a few more large swigs of ale before dropping onto the ground underneath her makeshift shelter. She wouldn’t dare make a fire on the first night, not without becoming familiar with the cycles of the terrain. So she settled in just as twilight fell, plunging the forest into darkness. Gripping her dagger, she watched and listened until her body could no longer stay awake.

Day Two

Whispers and memories flooded back slowly as the morning sun filtered into Kelah’s shelter. A weary sigh lifted her shoulders briefly before she rolled over onto her back and scrubbed her hands down her face. She blinked and stared up into the canopy above her. It was glittering and gorgeous in the sunlight. She had survived the night - step three.

During her brief breakfast of ale, her stomach soured at the thought of the same warm liquid for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so she decided to seek out some heartier fare.

Step four, she muttered as she headed deeper into the forest this time, taking care not to disturb anything or make much noise. She followed the sounds of wildlife, sensing some rustling near the tops of trees about a hundred yards south