In celebration, we bring you an excerpt. We hope you enjoy the hallmark YA prologue of a scene yoinked from late in the book and written to purposefully obscure certain pertinent details!
* Publication date not yet available and may never be available. Distribution subject to change. Price: 1 soul.
Prologue
I'm going to kill that traitorous pile of manatee dung if it's the last thing I do. And the way things are going, it probably will be the last thing I do. Unless you count dying. That'll be the last thing I do in the long run, I suppose. Which isn't going to be very long.
"I admire your resourcefulness as much as your resilience, Krispin," he says with a lazy smile. "If only you had stayed loyal to the Alza, you could have risen in the ranks and been my partner. We could have shared everything—power and authority. Wealth and grandeur. A home and a bed."
"I've seen how much you like to share," I reply. "At best I'd end up sleeping on the floor. More likely though I'd end up sleeping six feet under."
His eyes narrow. One hand strokes the drying gray skin of Fuza Ti's head while the other holds the knife steady over her throat. Fuza's large dark eyes fix on me in desperation and in them I see the reflection of millennia of Alzan treachery, hiding from everyone the truth of her kind, the truth of the manatees.
The more time I waste here, the more likely it is the Alza will discover the hex-bombs ringing the Archive. Where is Julien? He should have been here by now. If he had, then I wouldn't be in this situation right now, with a traitor holding the last living manatee at knifepoint and me armed with only my wits.
I am so dead.
"Ah," says the traitor, a cold cruel smile curling his lips. "You're wondering about your friend, aren't you? That so-handsome young man with the distastefully long hair."
"Some things are an acquired taste," I say, and have the pleasure of seeing a flicker of consternation cross his face. Slowly and carefully I begin to gather my power, feeling it as a hot liquid pulse in my chest even as the tart-sweet taste of pineapple tingles on my tongue. If I can just keep him thinking about things other than slitting Fuza's throat or calling the alarm—
Fuza Ti blinks. Or is she winking at me? I can't tell because her head is so large and I can't see her other eye at this angle. Maybe she's blinking in despair. With only me to count on, I can't blame her.
"He must be dashing to your rescue right now, you must think," he purrs. He presses harder on the knife so that the tip draws a bead of blood, a single drop of ruby shining against the silver blade and the gray of Fuza's hide. "Prepare yourself for disappointment, Krispin."
"I'm always disappointed when it comes to you," I reply. The pineapple is a yellow burst in my mouth and my power is a fireball of molten gold inside my body, straining for release. I fix my eyes upon the vile traitor. One square straight headshot, that's all I need, if only I can aim true enough, swift enough, sure enough, then—
He laughs and calls, "That's your cue, loverboy."
The door behind him swings open. Julien walks in, all long lean legs and long lustrous locks of ink-black, and in his hands is the tattered original text of the Mythos Grandi, the very book that we have pinned all our hopes upon.
Julien levels me a pitying look. He sighs.
"Oh Krispin," he says, not unkindly. "You should have known better. That's your problem, you know. You're too trusting."
He holds up the ancient Mythos Grandi and, with a snap of his fingers, as the traitor laughs and Fuza Ti trills in anguish, sets our last hope aflame.
We hope you enjoyed our prologue. Huzzah! What do you feel about prologues? Necessary/unnecessary/depends on how they're written?
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