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| Cover by Fiona Jayde |
I had a fantasy romance about 90% done for quite a while, fully edited, but I was prioritizing my scifi romances. Well, I've now finished The Captive Shifter (Magic of Claddare Book 1), available at major ebook sellers.
Here's the blurb:
Concealing her own considerable magical powers, Caitlyn enters the service of the northern Witch Queen masquerading as a simple healer. Under order from her goddess, she’s searching for a magical gem stolen long ago from her own people, believed to be hidden in the massive castle. The task is daunting but Caitlyn is sure she can locate the gem and escape, bringing the prize back to the temple where it belongs. Until she meets the captive shifter and her loyalties become dangerously divided.
In payment for her past services to his people, Kyler the leopard shifter has entered into a life of servitude far from his forest home, allowing the Witch Queen to tap his magic to power her ever darker spells. Factions at Court are threatening to turn the Queen to the Shadow. Her increasing demands for magic will cut short his nearly immortal lifespan. Kyler’s resigned to his fate until the day he crosses paths with the new arrival, whose secrets and magic entice and attract both man and leopard. Has he met his mate at last?
The Queen will never willingly release him from captivity. Caitlyn’s goddess refuses to grant her any delay in accomplishing her own task. Can they locate the magical gem, fight the Shadow and win free of the Witch Queen to earn the right to be together?
The Excerpt:
Glittering gemstone crystals lay heaped several feet high in
the center.
A queen’s ransom.
“Has this test been explained to you?” asked an elderly
adept.
Caitlyn pointed at the table. “Something about the
crystals?”
Bradana closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowed as if
she had a headache. Opening her eyes to
glare at Caitlyn, the princess said, “We’re wasting our time here. Apparently
we fielded a team of Searchers who must have been drunk or addled.” She took a
goblet from one of the pages and sipped the ruby beverage delicately, keeping
her eyes on Caitlyn.
Ylain frowned, the expression ill suiting her sweet, placid
face. “She’s here, she deserves her chance to show us what she can do.”
“Thank you, your highness,” Caitlyn said.
Nodding, the younger princess leaned forward on her chair.
“You must use your power to levitate the crystals and cast them on the altar
sands, making a picture for us. Any picture will do. We discern from how the
crystals respond to your will and what you do with them where your talents
manifest. Then we know how best to train you for our mutual benefit.”
“Searchers should have explained all this to her,” Bradana
said, rubbing her forehead before draining the wine from her goblet and
slamming the cup down. “We waste time, sister. There’s an entire room full of
more likely applicants waiting.”
Ylain kept talking, as if she was accustomed to ignoring
complaints from Bradana. “Your power must fit into the harmonious composition
the Witch Queen uses to cast her spells or it isn’t worth our time to work with
you.”
Pleased to see her hands weren’t trembling, Caitlyn rested
her fingertips lightly on the table’s rim. “Thank you for the explanation, your
highness. I’ll do my best.” The
unexpected test was going to be a problem no one foresaw at home when the plans
were laid. Caitlyn’s power spoke to and worked through the energies of living
things. Suppressing a shudder, she ran one hand through the closest haphazard
stack of faceted gemstones. Cold, dead, no spark of life. They might as well be
pebbles in the road for all the use they were to her. The sparkling stones were
primarily in red and purple hues although she noticed some flashes of green and
yellow. Those maybe she could influence.
“We don’t have all day to await your pleasure, bumpkin.” Bradana’s
voice was icy and several of her ladies in waiting tittered behind their fans.
Closing her eyes, Caitlyn visualized a flower garden, with
purple iris and red roses, lush green grass underfoot and golden sunlight
illuminating the entire scene. The best I can do with this material.
Holding the picture of the garden in the center of her mind’s eye, she opened
her physical eyes and stared at the pile of gems. As if there’d been a mild
earthquake, vibrations ran through the gleaming heap. The stones slipped apart
from each other, rising to float an inch or two above the table. She held them
suspended with her power and attempted to move them as a group from the table
to the waiting altar sand a few feet away. The mass of gems flowed sluggishly
through the air, stones dropping out here and there, crashing on the floor as
she failed to maintain her hold on all of them. Caitlyn’s whole body felt
rigid, stress thrumming in her nerves and pounding behind her temples as she
battled self-doubt and fear of failure. Never before had the use of magic been
an ordeal.
The door creaked open and then crashed shut behind her, the
unexpected noise making her flinch. All the stones fell to the ground in a
rainbow shower accompanied by discordant musical notes.
To keep herself from falling, Caitlyn locked her knees and
slumped against the table, nausea rising in her gut. Have she failed so early
in her quest? What thrice damned servant
of the Shadow interrupted me?
The new arrival was the Witch Queen herself, walking to the
empty throne, flanked by ladies in waiting and guards, trailed by the
shapeshifter. “I’ve come to watch your trial, woman from Ordlathus,” she said.
“Too late, sister, she failed most spectacularly. As might
have been foretold.” Bradana’s face bore a look of satisfaction like a cat
who’d devoured a succulent songbird.
The triumph on the princess’s face spurred Caitlyn to
protest. “I—I was distracted by the slamming of the door, your majesty.”
Scowling, Bradana shook a finger at her. “A true adept, even
untrained, would never be taken off task by noise. You failed.” She handed the
empty goblet to the smirking captain, who refilled it to the brim from a nearby
carafe.
“I wasn’t finished.” Caitlyn dug her nails into the
varnished wood under her hands. Her mission couldn’t end in this dismal fashion
– there was too much at stake for Ordlathus. She opened her mouth to beg for a
second chance but Princess Ylain was already speaking for her.
“She was in the middle of moving the crystals after all. I
propose we let her complete the effort and then we’ll know beyond a doubt.” Nibbling
at a frosted pink pastry, the royal brushed crumbs from her lap.
“Fair enough.” Apparently the Witch Queen was pleased to
agree. She sat on the throne, her guards and ladies arranging themselves in a
grouping according to rank. Caitlyn couldn’t help but notice the shapeshifter
stayed aloof from the group, leaning against the wall, a bit removed from where
the Queen sat. He crossed his arms as if bored.
Queen Margred inclined her head regally. “You may take a
moment to gather yourself, before you start again.”
“Thank you, your majesty.” Caitlyn half curtseyed and then
shut her eyes, trying to calm her mind and body before calling the energies
she’d been harnessing. Magic doesn’t flow without both in harmony. If only so
much didn’t depend on this one ridiculous task.
Staring at the jumbled crystals all over the floor place was depressing,
threatening to bring tears to her eyes. The gems were on the table, in the
sand, on the bare floor. She visualized a straw broom sweeping them together
and the crystals obligingly moved into a heap, all on the floor. Encouraged,
she commanded the stones to rise into the air, which they did, in twos and
threes, until all had united and become a swirling kaleidoscope. Caitlyn tried
to hold them while focusing on the garden picture she’d attempted to create.
The next step was to separate and rearrange the different colors. Closing her
eyes to diagram the picture she was creating, she heard stones falling to the
floor again. Forcing herself to draw a deep, calming breath, she took comfort
in the fact she only had to do a good enough job to pass. Commanding the stones to create her picture,
she willed them to go and imitate her favorite flowers from Ordlathus. Needing
to see the pattern, she opened her eyes, only to be confronted by a misshapen
mess, colors in the wrong places.
At least the crystals were still moving. She clung to a tiny
flicker of hope. Caitlyn was at the edge
of losing the spell, the picture was nowhere near complete, when suddenly she
was jolted by a wild, nearly uncontrollable energy adding itself to hers. The
surge lasted for a heartbeat. She hung onto the new magic, channeled the unruly
power, wove it firmly into her own pattern. The extra boost was enough to shake
the picture into a recognizable, fairly well done portrait of a spring garden.
The final stone, an iridescent green, slipped with a
clinking sound into its spot as the tip of an iris leaf.
