Petra MacDonald is a bisexual, pagan artist who lives and works on a small Scottish island. While in a trance, she paints a young girl who has been abducted by the Queen of the Fae and it falls to Petra to save her. She must travel to Faery, collect three items for the queen, escape the sex spell of the Selkie prince and steal the loyalty of her fae guard. Can she bring the child home before it’s too late?
Read on for an extract:
1
It was dusk when Petra came out of her trance, her arm sore from wielding the brush. Her hands were covered in paint and she could feel speckles drying on her face. She looked at the canvas and frowned. She had painted a young girl, facing away from the viewer, shoulders slumped and head down. That was unusual; Petra rarely painted people during trance work, except those she knew.
Even more notable was the menacing feeling of the painting. Shadows crowded around the child, claw-like shapes reaching towards her. As Petra studied the canvas she noticed the glint of eyes, peering towards the girl who hunched away from them.
The painting made her distinctly uneasy and she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck, as if she was being watched. She spun, the gloom-filled corners suddenly threatening. Her studio was small and she could see the whole room from where she stood. All was as it should be. Making her way over to the light-switch, Petra became convinced that someone lurked behind one of her spare easels or the canvasses leaning against the wall.
She flicked the lights on and walked a circuit of the room, checking thoroughly. She was alone. She let out a slow breath and turned back to the centre of the room, ready to clean up and pack away her tools but instead she cried out and stepped back, until she was pressed against the wall.
The girl in the painting was looking over her shoulder, straight at Petra.
Petra McDonald and the Queen of the Fae, available now.
In Slyvo, one child in a hundred is born with an affinity: a magical link to an element, able to shape and use it as they choose. If they are lucky they will become a master craftsman, able to command high prices; if they are unlucky, the factories always demand new wielders, kept as slaves and worked to exhaustion.
Talis and Almoris are free wielders, dedicating their lives to helping wielders leave the country for better lives abroad. But not everyone believes in their mission, and not everyone can be trusted - when Almoris takes in a runaway, they find themselves pulled into a mission that puts their lives in danger and threatens both their loyalties and their love.
Read on for an extract.
Talis bowed hir head and sniffed at the sour durafruit. Not ripe. Ze placed it back in the basket and selected another, adding it to hir shopping basket with one pair of hands while paying the trader with the other pair. Ze paused for a moment beneath the canopy of the fruit stall, pulling hir navy blue hair up into a knot on top of hir head, while waiting for a crowd of chattering drones to pass by before stepping out into the thoroughfare. They were boisterous, especially the few winged members of the group, and people moved aside to make way for them.
Talis strolled along in their wake, gaze roaming over the hexagonal marketplace, filled with stalls and people and even a few goats. Ze had already bought meat and vegetables, enough food to keep the boarding house running for the next few days, but ze was enjoying the sun on hir skin and for once, the air was fairly clear, the constant smog from the factories lifting away in the fresh breeze. ]
Ze wandered over to the stall of the spice merchant to see if there was anything new today. The boat from Akros had come in yesterday, bringing spices, fabrics and alcohol for trade and the market was busy today as a result. Talis leaned over the spice stall to check the pots at the back and movement caught the corner of hir eye. The edge of the wooden table was sprouting new leaves. Ze looked up sharply, hir antennae quivering. Someone nearby was leaking magic, hir affinity for wood overflowing and causing unintended effects. Talis studied the crowd, seeking out the wielder, searching every face for a clue.
Nothing.
Ze stretched hir antennae, swivelling them around to seek out the vibrations of the magic that was leaking through the market, making the wood behave strangely. A few stalls along, heading in the direction of the boarding house, bark was growing up one of the sanded table legs. Ze set off in that direction, gaze fixed on the stalls and carts of wood. The wielder was close but the number of people here and all of their conflicting vibrations and emotions was making it difficult to focus on hir.
Talis’ antennae curled up, and a sour feeling settled in hir stomach. Ze heard Vinhardt a breath later. There was no mistaking the hoarse voice of one of the worst slavers in Cortill; ze had suffered damage to hir throat in a factory accident that left scars on hir neck and on hir voice. Ze was accompanied by the smell of stale beer. Talis wrinkled hir nose up, turning hir face towards the nearest stall as the slaver passed.
What is Vinhardt doing here? This is a mid-level market, this isn’t hir hunting ground. I thought they were only taking wielders from the outer reaches.
Talis risked a glance over hir shoulder and saw Vinhardt lingering a few paces away, looking at the goods on a stall on the other side of the thoroughfare. Then it dawned on hir at last. Vinhardt wasn’t here as a slaver – ze was just shopping. The slaver might spend time in the inner circles of the colony but ze wasn’t one of them. Ze was only a mid-level drone, just like Talis and Almoris.
Cowering between the stall Talis stood at and the next, was a young person. Silver hair fell around a lilac face with eyes screwed shut. Barely more than a larva, ze was shivering despite the mid-morning warmth, hir antennae drooping, both sets of arms wrapped around hir thorax. Beside hir, the wood of the table legs began to bend, causing the stall to sag. Talis’ antennae sprang up again. Here was the source of the leak. The affinity wielder.