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Dawn
Below, you’ll find the blurb, reviews, and first chapter of Eos.
The Third Book in the Eos Dawn Series
Raine Velora and the exile town system have taken everything from Eos. After a heartbreaking loss, Eos was pushed to her breaking point. Now, she’s ready to do whatever it takes to bring Raine down and reinstate the prison system. Faced with loyalists in the cities, sandstorms in the desert, and the horrors in her head, Eos sets out to spread the word about the corruption of the New Territory. With the support of the exiles, Eos leads the revolution, but Raine and her officials aren’t the only threat in her path. Join Eos on her journey for freedom in Dawn, the third and final installment in the Eos Dawn Series, written by Jen Guberman.
Praise for Dawn
Chapter One of Dawn
I lay there in the grass, my eyes squeezed shut,
half-expecting and half-hoping I would wake up. All I wanted was to wake up and see Zane leaning against the tree beside me, peacefully eating breakfast. When I
opened them, Braylin and Skylar sat at a pathetic fire,
still half-asleep. Desperate, I quickly shut them again.
“She’s been out for hours,” I heard Braylin murmur to Skylar.
“Wake her up, then.”
“She’s been through a lot—"
“We all have.”
It all started because I stole some expensive rum
from a local bar with the hopes of selling it. From there,
I was exiled to Avid, a town full of thieves. It was in Avid that I met Zane, and ever since then, each day had been a little brighter than the last—until Raine shot him and ended everything.
Skylar paused for a moment before speaking again. “You and I don’t get to sleep in. Why should she?”
“We’ve been walking for hours, Sky, let her rest. You know as well as I do—she isn’t handling it well.”
“Handling what well, Braylin? Walking? She’s walked all the way to Fortitude before. She’s fine.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Zane’s death? Is that what you meant?”
“You don’t have to be so blunt.”
I felt my heart sink at their words and decided to end their discussion immediately.
“I’m awake, guys.”
“Oh.”
With a groan and an exaggerated stretch, my eyes flickered open, blinking back the sunlight. Towering trees with thick, rough bark and yellowing leaves surrounded
us like a complicated maze. In last night’s remaining
glow of sunlight, we arrived at the gates at the base of Clamorite—the exile town for the noise polluters and general nuisances of the New Territory. We figured one night in an exile town would be safer than the middle
of open desert. Considering we were in an exile town, Clamorite was the most beautiful of them—it was located behind a waterfall along the side of a mountain. The base of the mountain was full of trees and was the only place I have found wildlife in the New Territory.
“Your fire is stinking up the fresh air,” I teased, fanning myself. “Isn’t someone going to notice this?
“People in Clamorite have little fires all the time,” Braylin said. “It’s fine!”
“Why do we even need a fire? It’s not cold,” I said.
“Someone wanted toast this morning,” Skylar said, her eyes flicking toward Braylin.
“My bread is stale, so I just wanted to make the best of a mediocre breakfast!” Braylin defended.
“Mine isn’t,” Skylar said. “You suck at keeping your food preserved, don’t you?”
“I do not!”
“How do you store your bread?” she asked.
Braylin dug around in his backpack, his sleeve pulling up and revealing some of his simple black tattoos. He pulled out a loaf of bread, wrapped in a plastic bag that was merely tucked over on itself.
“You’re lucky it doesn’t have mold yet!” Skylar said, her petite nose crinkling. “You have to squeeze the extra air out and twist the end of the bag! You don’t know the next time we can get more food, so we have to make this stuff last.”
When we ran low on food, we had to steal from the cities or the exile towns. The best option was to keep our food as sealed and safe as possible.
After the war years ago, the survivors rebuilt four cities: Fallmont, Eastmeade, Rockhallow, and Nortown. The population was a lot smaller than people were used to, and the government they once knew was destroyed with the rest of the country. Because of this, we ended up with the exile town system. In the past, if a citizen was caught committing a crime, he or she would be arrested, tried,
and either fined or sent to prison. Now, people are given
a trial that they have almost no hope of winning, and after they inevitably lose the case, they are shipped out to the appropriate exile town. Avid was created for the thieves and has also conveniently become the literal dump of the New Territory. Bellicose is located inside caverns, mocking the “caveman” qualities of the violent criminals. Delaisse, an abandoned industrial town, is where the leaders
and government officials stick the drug addicts and the vandals. Equivox, my personal least favorite, is located
at the bottom of what is essentially a huge crater where they keep the liars. Then, there’s Clamorite. The “noise polluters” and rioters living in Clamorite are surrounded by beautiful, untouched greenery, and their camp is near
a stunning waterfall.
“So, besides toast, what’s for breakfast?” I asked, running my fingers through my hair and wincing when they tugged on a stubborn tangle. “Please don’t say eggs.”
“Eggs? Where would we get eggs?” Braylin asked, his head spinning around as if implying a market was hidden in the trees.
“The birds around here might’ve laid some eggs. Please don’t eat them,” I moaned, remembering when Zane and I were in Clamorite and I woke up to him preparing to cook a songbird’s fertilized eggs over a fire.
“Birds? There are birds here?” Braylin’s freckle-framed eyes widened.
I grunted in affirmation, forgetting that he wouldn’t know about the wildlife since the birds had quieted by the time we arrived last night.
“How do you know?” He narrowed his gaze, as if expecting me to reveal a clever joke.
“I was here a while back. I found a key here that helped unlock the Skeleton Key box.”
“You never did tell me much about that Key. Did you have it when you met me and the rest of the old group?”
“I did,” I said as I picked at my split ends, never looking up to meet his eyes.
“Don’t pick at your hair, Skunk,” Skylar warned. “You’ll make it look worse.”
“Stop calling me that,” I said, dangling a loose black hair over her. I was tired of Skylar calling me that stupid nickname because of my long, platinum and black hair.
“You had a key that could unlock anything, and you didn’t share with the group?” Braylin asked, fixated on the conversation at hand.
“I didn’t know if I could trust you guys. Now I know, so now you know.”
“How did you find it?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said, finally turning to face him.
“I’ll take the summarized version.”
“I found some documents in Avid that mentioned that there was a single key in each of the exile towns that could open the box containing a key that could open any lock, so Zane and I found each of the exile town keys. Then, we found the box in Fallmont, unlocked it, stole the Key, and that’s it.”
Except it’s not. I decided he didn’t need to know that Raine Velora, the leader of Fallmont, the largest city in the New Territory, caught us and tortured Zane in order to get me to tell her everything I knew about the Key and how I travelled between exile towns.
“Huh,” Braylin muttered. “Can I see it again?”
“Skylar’s got it,” I answered.
Skylar reached into a pocket on her bag and pulled out the Key, handing it to Braylin. He ran his fingers
along its cool metal, holding it up to the light as the sun shimmered through the green, purple, and blue glass of
the head.
“We need a plan,” Skylar interrupted Braylin’s trance.
“For what? Taking down Raine and the entire exile town system? Eh. No big deal,” I said.
“Eos, I’m being serious right now. We can’t just camp out here forever and hope this resolves itself.”
“I’m aware of that, but we’ve also only been here for a few hours. We don’t want to rush into this. I tried that already—clearly it doesn’t work.”
Skylar and Braylin shifted their gazes away from me and everything went silent.
“Guys,” I said. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”
“That isn’t something you just get over,” Braylin
said, his head hung low. “Does everyone who made it to Fortitude with you even know?”
“How would they?” I asked, my lip snarled unintentionally. “They’re in Fortitude. I can’t exactly mosey over and tell them.”
I thought for a moment about my friends—the team that helped Skylar and I make it all the way to Fortitude. I hated that I never had a chance to say goodbye to Bexa before I left, and I wished Cindee was here to see her brother alive and well.
Upon seeing me sitting in silent thought, Braylin decided to throw in his two cents again.
“I think it would really help you to talk about it,”
he said.
I turned slowly to face him, staring dead into his eyes.
“Zane and I tried to convince Raine to change her mind. We didn’t have a solid plan and we rushed things.
Raine shot Zane. Zane’s dead. Now we know better. What more do you want me to say?”
“Seriously?” Skylar looked back at me in dismay.
“You loved him, E. It’s okay to grieve.”
I turned away from them, my eyes locking on a tiny crimson bird in a lush tree. When I locked eyes with the bird, it tilted its head at me, as if waiting for my response.
“Yup. I loved him, but I’m fine. Moping around isn’t going to kill Raine Velora. Creating a rock-solid plan is going to kill Raine Velora, so believe me, I understand
the importance of a plan, but for now? For now, I just want breakfast.”
Without letting them respond, I retreated to my bag, lying at the base of a tree a few yards away. I dug out a walnut muffin and nibbled at it mindlessly. I looked up at the crimson bird, still perched in his tree, staring at me.
“What?” I mouthed to him, as if he could understand.
Just then, the little bird relieved himself, letting a small white puddle spatter against some rocks at the base of the tree before he flew away.
Nice talking to you, too.
My attention returned to my muffin, but I still felt Braylin and Skylar’s stares on my back, so I turned on my heel and tucked off between some of the trees.
Truthfully, it didn’t feel real. It was strange, not travelling with Zane—it almost felt as if he had gone
on a supply run and would return soon. The few days I was in Ironwood, the only prison in the New Territory, were the worst of it. The city leaders only send criminals to Ironwood as a last resort because they don’t have the staff to manage it. If it weren’t for Braylin being in the cell across from me, I would have gone mad from the grief compiled with loneliness. I made it, I told myself. I did my grieving, and now it’s time to move on.
When I finished choking down the dry muffin, I wandered back to the makeshift campsite, walking in on
an enthusiastic brainstorming session.
“It would work though!” Braylin said, his dimpled grin giving him a childish look, despite his silvery hair.
“But what about the officials? They were already
all over the place, and if you think Raine doesn’t have them on some kind of super alert after I broke you two imbeciles out of the only prison in the New Territory, you’re delusional.”
“Skylar’s got a point,” I said, sitting on a rock beside Braylin. “I didn’t hear what the plan was, but whatever it is, we need to be mindful of the officials. We don’t know what kinds of orders Raine has given them—whether it’s to shoot on sight or to capture—but we do know they are definitely looking for us. That’s why we picked here to hide out, isn’t it? It’s less likely they’re going to check an exile town, so it at least buys us a little time.”
Braylin crossed his arms defiantly. “You didn’t even listen to my idea, so you can’t discredit it!”
I motioned with my hands for him to present his case, and he straightened his posture, locking eyes with me before proceeding.
“Propaganda.”
“What?”
Skylar jumped in. “He’s got this crazy idea to
deliv—”
“Hey! Don’t steal my spotlight!”
“Okay, okay. Keep going,” Skylar rolled her eyes. “Child…” she muttered.
“If we write letters that reveal the terrible, corrupt things Raine has done and how flawed the exile town system is, we can deliver them under people’s doors, and maybe we can at least begin to convince people to stop supporting her. Maybe we could gain followers who can help us with supplies or give us shelter. If nothing else,
we would be sneaky about delivering them, so even if it doesn’t work, the only thing we lose is some time.”
“Like I said, it’s crazy—”
I hummed to myself as I visualized the logistics of such a feat.
It could go terribly wrong. Then again, when have we ever done anything that didn’t have the potential to make everything worse? We always take risks—there isn’t a safe route, but this one is about the closest thing we have. Like Braylin said, we just need to be sneaky about delivering the letters.
Skylar stared at me, head cocked to the side and eyebrows raised, waiting for me to speak.
“Actually, I think it’s a good idea,” I said.
“See?” Braylin straightened his posture proudly. “I told you!”
“There are at least a hundred ways this could go wrong! Do you really want me to count them off?”
“Sure,” I said flatly, arms crossed. I blinked impatiently at Skylar.
Her mouth hung open for a moment before she composed herself and began to speak.
“One… We could get caught and sent to Ironwood. If we’re all arrested, you can forget escaping this time. Two… they might just save themselves the time and kill us. Three… even if we aren’t caught by officials, residents might see us and send search parties after us all over the New Territory—”
“You think they aren’t already all searching for us? We escaped the only prison in the New Territory, I killed an official, and we’ve escaped exile towns. Even just escaping Avid before the rest of this mess started—that alone gives them a reason to hunt me down. I took just about the only rule of the exile towns and made a mockery of it by breaking into and escaping from every single exile town. They have plenty of reasons already to be scouring every foot of sand in this hellhole,” I responded.
“Fine. You know what? You want to try Braylin’s propaganda idea—we’ll try it. If I even catch wind that we’ve been spotted, I’m leaving you two behind, and I’ll
be gone so fast you—”
“You’ll be missed,” I teased.
“Damn,” Braylin muttered, his eyes darting between Skylar and me.
“So, how do we start these letters?” I asked, turning to him and ignoring Skylar’s stunned expression.
“There aren’t any printers in the exile towns, and
it’s far too risky to break into one of the cities to try to casually print off thousands of letters. So, first we need paper and pens.”
“Sounds simple enough,” I said.
“Not exactly. I don’t know about you, but I doubt the exile towns have much of a paper and pen supply, so we might have to really scavenge.”
“Avid has pencils and paper,” I said, remembering the closet under the stairs in my building in Avid. Early in my stay there, after finding the Skeleton Key documents,
I had asked Lamb if she had paper and a pencil—I had intended to take notes on the documents, but I refused to tell her what I needed them for. Little did I know at the time that Lamb would join Zane and me in the hunt for the Key, ultimately leading to her death in Equivox at the hands of a deranged exile.
I felt my stomach burn, dragging me from my thoughts.
“What? Really? Alright—I guess we’ll go to Avid. About how far is it from here?” Braylin asked.
“It’s on the other side of Fallmont.”
“Crap. Is there anything closer?” he asked.
“Delaisse and Fallmont,” I said. “Everything else is just as far or even farther.”
“You were from Delaisse, right?” Braylin turned
to Skylar, who already had her arms crossed and eyes narrowed at him.
“Yup.”
“Did they have pens and paper?”
“No pens. And not paper for writing.”
“Paper for wh—”
“Nevermind,” Skylar cut him off, rolling her eyes with a subtle smirk.
I snickered under my breath.
“All jokes aside, no. Not as far as I ever saw,” she said.
“Fallmont has to have pens and paper,” he thought aloud.
“Yes, they should,” I said. “And officials. Probably some citizens who would love to turn exiles in to those officials as well.”
“Touché.”
“So, Avid is our next best option?” Skylar asked.
“I think Bellicose is just about as far, too. It’s also a lot harder to break into and out of, and I don’t really know if we’d find what we need there.”
“I also don’t really want to be surrounded by murderers, thanks,” Braylin said, his leg twitching.
“That’s a generalization,” I corrected him. “They aren’t all murderers and you know that.”
“I know,” he grumbled. “Still don’t want to go there.”
“It sounds like that wouldn’t be logical anyways, so stop whining about it,” Skylar snipped.
“Well, I guess we should be on our way?” He stood and adjusted his socks around his ankles, which had become uneven as he sat.
Skylar and I groaned in unmotivated unison.
“It’s nearly lunchtime already,” Braylin observed. “Someone decided to sleep in, so we’ve already lost a few hours, and it took us about a day to get here from the last ruins we stayed in. It’ll be a couple days before we reach Avid, so I’d rather get going.”
“I hate that we came all this way just to turn around and go right back in the same direction,” Skylar said.
“I know,” I agreed. “But this was just the best option at the time. I thought they’d be less likely to check the exile towns for us first, and this one was close and seemed like the best option at the moment.”
“But why not just make this our permanent camp?” Skylar asked. “It’s so much better than the desert for so many reasons, and like you said… who’s going to look for us in an exile town?”
“Eventually they might think to, and in the event
that someone was to spot us, there aren’t limitless escape routes here like there are out in the ruins. There’s one
exit. If they find us here, we might not have a chance
to escape.”
“Let’s get moving!” Braylin called, already walking toward the gates.
“You heard the man,” I signaled to Skylar, sarcastically saluting Braylin with a teasing smirk.
Braylin beamed at me as he spoke, throwing his bag over his shoulder.
“Darn skippy.”