Excerpt!
Liyah blinked and found herself back in her body in the castle’s kitchen. Edwin gazed at her, concerned. “What happened? Are you all right?” Indeed. She looked down to where the bag of red dust should have been cupped in her hand. The bag, along with its siblings on the table, had disappeared. For a moment, Liyah mourned. She wanted to return.
Edwin must have read her expression. “I removed it. It’s addictive. Soul dust. If I’d known something so powerful was left hanging around in the kitchens, I would have checked and removed it earlier. Perhaps magical royalty is less concerned with lower magics. Are you alright?” He’d rounded the table and stood beside her, rubbing her back.
She wasn’t, but she didn’t want him focused on her. She needed him to return to the dragon. “Lower magics?”
He sighed. “I forget you do not remember certain things. Most things, it seems, related to magics. In my kingdom, Paradimia, we are not generally born magics users, but we do have access to lower magics—magics not of people, but of things, like the soul dust. Low-level magics—from something inanimate, like the dust—may be used by anyone, whether they are magical themselves or not.”
She’d thought this land was without magics, but it seemed there were magics within, just not many magics of living beings. She nodded. “So it is not likely low-level magics would be hanging around in a kitchen. I understand.” She felt around on her body. “I don’t seem to be injured, so perhaps it is time I started my journey.”
“Do you not wish for my company?”
She needed him elsewhere. “It isn’t that I don’t want you with me. My parents need your assistance. Bethela will need another story for the spell needed to put my parents back to sleep. And I am going to the Dry Woods to free Gabriel. You see? We are fated to part ways now.”
It was a pity his expression grew suspicious, for she had relayed the truth. His voice broke as he spoke. “Is it what I did with the gargoyles? Is that why you no longer wish for my assistance?”
She had only briefly thought of the gargoyles since she died. It must have weighed on him. “It is not the gargoyles, although I know you to be the true knight you are from what I witnessed. And I know you to have love in your heart, even when you sometimes speak to me without consideration. No. Here I ask you to be the guardian I know you to be.”
“But why is it important that your parents go back to sleep? Surely they can be of greater assistance awake. They will eventually remember who you are.”
Liyah reached out and squeezed his arm. “I already know who I am, Edwin. That is thanks to you. I am Aaliyah, and I am kind and courageous and determined. I know those things about myself because of you.”
Edwin sighed and leaned back against the table. His golden locks fell against his handsome face. “So now I need to help your parents go back to sleep.”
“Yes. If anyone remembers who I am, a spell will find and kill me. Like the spell that protected the castle.”
He frowned. “Yes. That was very dangerous.”
“And my father says this spell is far worse than the one that chased us about Haven. So, you see, it is imperative that they go back to sleep. I do not wish to separate, but I must free Gabriel. When I left him, he was afire again.”
Aaliyah’s journey continues in this erotic fantasy-scape as she struggles to understand whether love includes depravity.
Exposed to a handful of soul dust, Aaliyah re-awakens and sets off to free Gabriel from his prison within the Dry Woods. Outside, she is again confronted by a gryphon but with no not-to-bright knight to defend her. Good thing the gryphon only wants companionship. The flight of a wandering heartsick gryphon is not a direct route to anywhere and after watching a raunch of unicorns, Liyah tumbles into a magical river far from her desired destination. Between encounters with dwarves who remember her forgotten promise and fairies who sell favors for power, she must master the primal magics of patterning and untether the pleasures she once bound to fidelity. For Liyah has learned that Gabriel, the man who anchors her, is not only trapped in the Dry Woods but also bound by primal locks that will age him to death if opened incorrectly.
Every bit of new magics comes with a cost: soul-dust addiction, bargains that entangle desire and duty, and adversaries who want her power for themselves. With time collapsing and a witch’s spell hovering like an axe, Liyah must decide whether the route to rescue is the same path she promised never to tread—pleasure given away to reclaim what matters most. The question is simple and brutal: how much will she sacrifice to save him?
Author bio:
Victor Pierce is a seasoned writer with a focus on erotic fiction. He enjoys classic mythology and horror novels. His first series, The Princess Annals, draws together his love for mythology and the erotic. He resides in College Park with his partner and her anxiety-ridden black cat and overly-social gray cat. You may reach him at victor.pierce@bookofvenus.com or at or at https://www.bookofvenus.com/connect-with-us/
