Twelve Glass Slippers Buried in Ash

von Jason J Gusman

150 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

A seamless pair of glass slippers. A dying kingdom built on stolen rot. And an eternal midnight dance that leaves only ash in its wake.In the freezing gutters of Low Oakhaven, nineteen-year-old Clara Mercer knows the anatomy of survival. Armed with an awl, stiff leather scraps, and bitter pine pitch, she ekes out a meager living at Master Isaac's workbench while nursing her ten-year-old sister, Willa, through the fatal ravages of the Ash-Cough. Clara's world is narrow, brutal, and bound to a single desperate goal: keep Willa breathing before the royal drafting bell condemns her to the quarries.Everything shatters when iron-clad guards drag Clara to the royal citadel. High King Victor Hale is slowly decomposing upon his throne, his necrotic limbs veiled behind heavy ermine furs and suffocating frankincense. Displayed before him on velvet cushions are twelve pairs of diamond-hard, unearthly glass slippers. They possess no seams, welt cords, or peg marks-only extreme, tendon-snapping arches caked with sulfurous soot, bone dust, and dried arterial blood.The King's ultimatum is absolute: discover where his twelve daughters vanish each midnight and what tears their shoes to ribbons. Uncover the secret, and Clara will receive a pouch of silver and the life-elixir that can cure Willa. Fail or refuse, and her sister will be drafted into the dawn tithe.Concealed inside an ornate linen press within the princesses' royal chambers, Clara witnesses the eldest sister strike an obsidian mirror and whisper an ancient sylph incantation, opening an abyss of black rime-ice. Following their descent beneath the fathom-deep permafrost of Lake Somnus, Clara steps into an inverted crystalline palace suspended over a dark aquatic abyss.She expects to find captive maidens awaiting rescue. Instead, she uncovers an abattoir in three-four time.Cruel, immortal, and radiant, the princesses willingly slip into their glass heels to drag paralyzed commoner youths onto the floor, leeching mortal vitality through violent pirouettes until their partners collapse as withered husks of gray ash. Cornered in the shadows, Clara is forced to slip her own feet into an abandoned pair of glass slippers to blend among the dancers. Instantly, microscopic glass teeth pierce her soles, locking onto her tendons and flooding her mind with a freezing euphoria-while shearing away her most precious memories, thread by agonizing thread.Beneath the blood-slicked ice lies a chained ancient progenitor, a looming alchemical firestorm, and a shattering truth about Willa's true heritage. With the Blood Solstice approaching, Clara must wield her cobbler's tools to shatter an empire of leeching crystal before the rhythm consumes the last remnant of who she is.Visceral, haunting, and soaked in dread, Twelve Glass Slippers Buried in Ash is a dark gothic reimagining of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses." Step onto the ice-if you are willing to pay what the dance demands.

• Themen: Belletristik Traditionelle oder kulturelle Geschichten und Nacherzählungen Märchen und Volksmärchen / Märchennacherzählungen
• ISBN: 9798182775861
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 14.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Jason J Gusman