Elliah ~ 1
My mother told me many times that all adolescents feel like
they don't belong, but… I really didn't. So I spent my free time away from
other elves, on my own but for the animals… they didn't understand how broken I
was. And I was quite pleased with my current find, so I snarled when a noise
behind me scared away the drakeling that had settled in my hands. Black with a
pattern of red scales along its spine, its body the thickness of my finger, it
took flight with a flurry of thin leathery wings and disappeared behind a
massive brown trunk.
"The real ones are much more intimidating," said
an unfamiliar voice.
Time slowed as I tensed to run, shocked that I'd let my
guard down so much that anyone had gotten that close. How many lurked behind
me? On the outskirts of town, in the thick of the woods near the river, I had
expected solitude.
"Stay, Bereft. I am not afraid," said the voice.
His words provoked me.
"No one's afraid of me," I
blurted. Bitterness stained my words as surely as the pollen of the bloodcups
had stained my ragged clothes.
I turned away from the vanished drakeling to focus on the
intruder who'd scared it away. A man. No, I corrected myself, someone
my age. Someone not quite old enough for adults to consider one of their
own, but too old to call a child.
But not Bereft. No other elf shared that with me.
The newcomer was slightly taller than me with a thin frame,
his light hair hanging long, wild, and tangled. He was new to the village—I
would have noticed an elf with skin so light. I'd heard whispers of him at
school. Kethryllia had called him Salt-kissed, and I'd wondered what that
meant, but his light skin answered that question. He'd undoubtedly caught
whispers about me, heard of my… condition. Bereft. Yet at that moment, I
thought only of the hours of coaxing I'd spent to draw the little drakeling
into my grasp, and that the stupid elf had scared it away. I wanted to punch
him.
"Maybe they should be," he said, taking a step
back, though it would have taken me two leaps to get to him, and he'd have me
pinned in one, if he had any skill with magic at all. But I'd prepared a leap
already, only not in his direction. As I sprung away, he continued, raising his
voice, "And you're right, they're not afraid of you."
I landed with a tree between us. His magic wouldn't be able
to snag me there. Unless he was very good at it.
"They're afraid of what you represent."
Continue the Thaumatropic
Roots Series
Magic is as
natural as breathing in Elliah's world — except to her. Born without a single
spark in a war that runs on it, she has nothing but her will and her refusal to
accept the limits everyone else has already decided for her. This is what
happens when the world writes you out of the story, and you refuse to leave.
Get them:
Mother
of Trees
Bones
of Cenaedth
Secrets
of Deara
Shepherds
of Truth
The Guardian of the
Palace
The Guardian League, #1
Part of the Fractured Arcana Universe
by Steven J. Morris
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Magic isn’t real.
Red Hernandez is very sure of that.
She wants a quiet life after Special Forces—just a steady
security job at a half-finished Manhattan skyscraper.
But then a sister tower implodes in a way physics can’t
explain.
Witnesses report creatures in the smoke.
And something hunts her in the tunnels beneath.
Red wants answers. What she gets instead is an elf with a
sword, a troll with a wry sense of humor, and a dwarf who believes every battle
requires an audience. They insist an ancient enemy has crossed into our
world—and Red becomes an accidental gatekeeper simply because she’s standing on
the fault line when it cracks open.
As a hidden war erupts in the shadows of New York City, Red
must decide: run from the past that nearly destroyed her… or fight for a world
she’s only just beginning to believe in.
A veteran with
nothing left to lose.
A threat born of magic and shadow.
A team she never saw coming.
The Guardian of the Palace launches the
action-packed Guardian League series—perfect for fans of urban
fantasy, modern-world magic, found family, and heroines who refuse to back
down.
**Get it FREE!**
Amazon
* Bookbub
* Goodreads
Prologue
Corpses patterned the ground as far as my eye could see, a
patchwork quilt of death.
I stood atop a skeletal tower, overlooking the broken ruins
of an ancient civilization, so very far from home. I envisioned the beauty that
the soaring arches once held, the bridges between the constructs reaching out
with broken arms, buildings leaning against one another like ancient lovers in
a final embrace. Crumbled remains powdered the bases of former statues, and,
everywhere, all of it was littered with the dead.
Like a phoenix, I stood, bathed in fire. An Angel of Death.
Not the Angel of Death—he was an ass.
A part of me wanted to go down and see for myself. Maybe
just to make sure… to make sure I had done my job… and killed everyone that
used to inhabit that world. The magic I was wielding should have destroyed them
all—something inside of me could feel that it had—but I wanted
to see it.
Yet I knew that was unrealistic. I didn't have the time.
There were other worlds that needed my infection, and Earth was on my
shortlist.
Chapter 1
Red - Day 20, Sunday, the day after the attack
"Ms. Hernandez?" a muffled voice called from a
distance, accompanied by a gentle rapping on a door. My consciousness
registered the interruption as a nuisance and pulled me back under.
What seemed like seconds later, the rapping came again, more
insistent. "Ms. Hernandez."
Ms. Hernandez was my mom… why were they bothering me?
Then a scraping sound, and an alarmed voice. "Ms.
Hernandez! Are you okay?"
Some scrambling, some grunts, more scraping… shit, I was
going to have to wake up. Why couldn't they just let me sleep?
I tried to answer, but my throat was dry and nothing came
out. Coughing, I attempted to sit up, not wholly returned from my trip to
dreamland. "I'm here. I'm okay." Was I though? I wasn't sure.
I was in my flat. Not the desert. My door was partway open,
and a slightly overweight man had paused in the act of pushing his way in. I
recognized him, but his name escaped me. Swinging my legs off my cot, I did a
quick modesty check. I was fully dressed, though rather tragically, in some
semblance of civilian fatigues—muddied, disheveled, and a little bloody.
The reason came screaming back to me. There had been
creatures, unearthly monsters, in The Palace. They'd done things I
could not explain by any of the rules I knew. And they'd beaten the hell out of
me and then patched me back up in a matter of seconds. I'd blown the head clean
off of one of them and fled the scene.
Not my smartest move.
Continue The
Guardian League Series!
Earth, through its technological advances, supports nearly
eight billion souls; from a cosmic perspective, that makes it ripe for the
picking. 'Red' Hernandez, trying to put a questionable military life behind
her, finds herself caught in the middle of stopping an apocalyptic invasion of
Earth. But to do that, she has to figure out who the good guys are, and how she
can combat forces in which she does not believe.
