The Chemical Garden Series Books 1-3: Wither, Fever, Sever
Lauren DeStefano’s complete, breathtaking, dystopian romance series, The Chemical Garden Trilogy.This bundle includes Wither, Fever, and Sever.WITHER: What if you knew exactly when you would die?Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb – males only live to age twenty-five and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out…16-year-old Rhine Ellery is kidnapped and sold as a bride to Linden, a rich young man with a dying wife. Even though he is kind to her, Rhine is desperate to escape her gilded cage. With the help of Gabriel, a servant she is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in what little time she has left.FEVER: Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ringmistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago – surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.SEVER: Time is running out for Rhine.With less than three years left until the virus claims her life, Rhine is desperate for answers. Having escaped torment at Vaughn’s mansion, she finds respite in the dilapidated home of her husband’s uncle, an eccentric inventor who hates Vaughn almost as much as Rhine does.
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The Chemical Garden Series Books 1-3: Wither, Fever & Sever
Lauren DeStefano
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
Wither
First Published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2011.
Copyright © Lauren DeStefano 2011.
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2011
Cover photographs © Ali Smith
Fever
First Published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2012.
Copyright © Lauren DeStefano 2012.
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2012
Cover photographs © Ali Smith
Sever
First Published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2013.
Copyright © Lauren DeStefano 2013
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Cover photographs © Ali Smith
Lauren DeStefano asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBNs:
Wither: 9780007425471
Fever: 9780007457793
Sever: 9780007483518
Bundle Edition (Containing Wither, Sever and Fever) © November 2014 ISBN: 9780008113711
Version: 2014-09-19
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1. I WAIT. They keep us in the dark for so…
2. FOR MALES twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it’s…
3. IT’S NOT GABRIEL who wakes me in the morning, but…
4. IT’S MY TURN to keep watch. We’ve locked the doors…
5. WHEN THE EVENING is at last through, I languish on…
6. “I WANT TO PLAY a game,” Cecily says.
7. I HOLD MY BREATH as they pass. Eternity is the…
8. THE ATTENDANTS arrive in abundance. All of them rushing into…
9. LINDEN is so delighted about the pregnancy, and the mood…
10. IT SEEMS THAT leaves are always bursting with new colors.
11. THE HOUSE doesn’t blow away. Aside from a few broken…
12. THE AIR IS STILL. It’s quiet. I can breathe without…
13. LINDEN SEEMS to have no idea that I sustained these…
14. ALL NIGHT I dream of rivers, and beneath the water,…
15. WHEN CECILY finishes playing her song, and the illusion shrinks…
16. I DON’T SEE GABRIEL the next day. My breakfast is…
17. I’M SICK for the rest of the afternoon. Jenna holds…
18. LINDEN SAYS, “You and Jenna get along well, don’t you?”
19. I WORRY for the rest of the evening. Deirdre tries…
20. WE WAIT, and we wait. I want to look away,…
21. ON THE MORNING of the winter solstice, Jenna manages to…
22. THE BABY will not stop crying. His face is bright…
23. JENNA WAS RIGHT. She leaves before I do. We lose…
24. WE RETURN from the New Year’s party in the early…
25. IN THE MONTH before my escape, I spend all of…
26. I TAKE the elevator to the ground floor and cross…
27. WE RUN for what feels like all night. It feels…
Fever
The First Bride
Acknowledgments
About the Author
we lose sense of our eyelids. We sleep huddled together like rats, staring out, and dream of our bodies swaying.
I know when one of the girls reaches a wall. She begins to pound and scream—there’s metal in the sound—but none of us help her. We’ve gone too long without speaking, and all we do is bury ourselves more into the dark.
The doors open.
The light is frightening. It’s the light of the world through the birth canal, and at once the blinding tunnel that comes with death. I recoil into the blankets with the other girls in horror, not wanting to begin or end.
We stumble when they let us out; we’ve forgotten how to use our legs. How long has it been—days? Hours? The big open sky waits in its usual place.
I stand in line with the other girls, and men in gray coats study us.
I’ve heard of this happening. Where I come from, girls have been disappearing for a long time. They disappear from their beds or from the side of the road. It happened to a girl in my neighborhood. Her whole family disappeared after that, moved away, either to find her or because they knew she would never be returned.
Now it’s my turn. I know girls disappear, but any number of things could come after that. Will I become a murdered reject? Sold into prostitution? These things have happened. There’s only one other option. I could become a bride. I’ve seen them on television, reluctant yet beautiful teenage brides, on the arm of a wealthy man who is approaching the lethal age of twenty-five.
The other girls never make it to the television screen. Girls who don’t pass their inspection are shipped to a brothel in the scarlet districts. Some we have found murdered on the sides of roads, rotting, staring into the searing sun because the Gatherers couldn’t be bothered to deal with them. Some girls disappear forever, and all their families can do is wonder.
