Category: The Writing

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Letters Snippet

This is another snippet of a Dear Sir, I’m Yours prequel. I’ll be writing out several scenes over the next few weeks, alternating with more letters, and when the whole thing is done, I’ll package it all together as a pdf on the Free Reads page. For now, I’m calling this prequel “Letters” since I haven’t come up with another title. I’ll accumulate the links here in reverse chronological order if you need to catch up!

Letter Two
Snippet One
Letter One

Snippet Two:  The first day of class
 

After preparing all weekend for the big introduction to the professor of her most erotic dreams ever, Rae wanted to scream and throw the ridiculously thick course book out the window.  She’d been a nervous wreck last night and couldn’t sleep, so of course, she’d overslept this morning.  Whose God-awful idea was it to schedule class at eight o’clock in the morning anyway?

So instead of looking gorgeously and studiously prepared in her coveted front-row seat as soon as Dr. Connagher walked in the door, she found herself hovering outside the door, frazzled, hair still damp in a frantic braid, and late enough that he’d already begun speaking.  The thought of walking into his class, late, with only enough prerequisites by the skin of her teeth–while he spoke in that rumbling purr–made her want to sink into the floor and disappear. 

At least there were only a handful of students to witness her shame.

Taking a deep breath, she quietly opened the door.  It creaked like a hundred-year-old rusted iron hinge on a haunted house, and every single eye focused on her.

Including two steely blue ones with a deep canyon deep between them.

Ducking her head before those fierce eyes could lock on hers, she mumbled an apology and rushed toward a seat.  Front row, but not center.  Heart pounding, she yanked out the poetry anthology and stared at it without blinking until her eyes burned.  She could feel his attention like a brand searing her flesh.

“Well,” he finally said.  “I suppose we beat the dean after all.  Miss Jackson, I presume?”

Peeking up at him through her lashes, she nodded.

“We’re very thankful for your late registration.  If you hadn’t joined us, I’m afraid this class would’ve been scratched off the schedule.  As it is, this is the last year I’ll be teaching the Romantic Period.”

His voice growled with suppressed frustration.  Now she knew why he’d been outside the dean’s office on Friday. 

“As with so many other niceties from an age gone by, I suppose it was only inevitable that this generation give up on poetry.  We’re too busy playing on the computer or watching television to sit down and read any book at all, let alone one that makes us think.”

His voice had gradually neared until she knew he must be standing right in front of her.  She could see the toes of his boots, a different, cleaner pair in black leather than the ones he’d worn on Friday, and although he still wore jeans, these were black too.  Imagining him topping it off with a black leather jacket made her shudder. 

“However, as grateful as I am for meeting the minimum quota of ten students to hold this class, I think it only fair that I warn you, Miss Jackson.”  He paused, waiting for her to meet his gaze. 

Heart pounding, she slipped her trembling hands beneath the desk and gripped them so hard she felt her nails digging into her palms.  This was it.  Would he feel anything at all when he looked at her?  Would he see the effect he had on her?  Or would he only see a silly college student drooling over her sexy professor?

Hoping she didn’t look like a crazed fangirl, she raised her gaze up to his. 

“This is not a class for the faint of heart.”

Beneath that steely blue intensity, her throat tightened but she managed to sound like a normal, intelligent student.  Mostly.  “I know this is a senior level class and no, I’m not an English major, I’m actually in Accounting, so I’m going to be behind, but I promise I’ll work very hard.”

She shut her mouth and swallowed hard to keep from saying, for you.

Long agonizing moments went by, each thud of her heart resounding in her head until it ached.  She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, let alone feeling.  His eyes had narrowed, deepening the groove between his eyes.  Frowning and silent, he stepped closer, forcing her to tilt her head back to keep her gaze on his face.

Sensing that strain on her neck, he bent down, keeping his attention locked on her.  He was close enough that she caught a faint scent of his cologne, something spicy and rich, with a hint of old, treasured leather books with gilded edges and swirling embossed titles.  He even smelled like libraries and knowledge.  She’d never been a fan of the library before, but damned if her mouth didn’t water at the thought of pressing her face against his neck and breathing in that scent hot off his skin.

“Why are you in my class, Miss Jackson?” 

Husky and low, he kept his voice soft, almost as if they were the only two people in the room.  Now she heard the hint of a southern drawl in his voice.  She knew from his biography on the campus website that he hailed from Texas.  He wasn’t married (or she wouldn’t be here).  He’d gotten his degree from Southern Methodist.  Or was that where he’d gotten his doctorate?

Her mind babbled the facts she’d dug up on him because she couldn’t think about his question.  She couldn’t answer him.  Literally, her mind blanked.  She couldn’t think of a single plausible excuse other than the truth, which would be too humiliating to admit to him, let alone in front of the rest of the class. 

His previous students had whispered wide-eyed about his stringent requirements.  He expected formality and immediate, well-thought-out answers, and if she didn’t answer, he’d kick her out of his class so fast her head would spin.  Or she could simply tell him the truth, and later, he’d be laughing while he told his friend all about the crazy student he’d had security escort off campus.

Silence weighed heavy in the room.  None of the other students made a peep, as if they dreaded drawing his formidable attention to them instead.  Her pulse was so fast and frantic that she could feel the side of her neck thumping away like a subwoofer.  She couldn’t sit here and not answer his question.  It was like he’d injected her with a truth serum or something, but the thought of blurting out the truth in front of everyone made him swim in her vision.

Your voice makes me hot and when I look at you, every bone in my body melts.

Horrified, she realized her eyes had filled with tears.

Abruptly, he returned to the table at the front of the room, picked up an Expo marker, and began writing on the whiteboard.  Dutifully, the other students flipped open their notebooks and the busy scratching of pens filled the silence.

Rae sagged in her seat like a piece of wilted lettuce, relieved that he’d relented before she’d done something stupid.  Damp and sweaty, her shirt stuck to her back.  Her hands shook, but she managed to shove the book back inside her backpack.  Now if she could only slink away quietly…

“Miss Jackson,” he said in that wicked voice without turning from the board, “I expect you to stop by my office immediately after class to discuss my concerns.”

Her heart soared at the thought of speaking to him in private, and then plummeted to the depths of hell.  She swallowed hard.  He wasn’t the sort of man that ever lost a battle, let alone surrendered.  In the privacy of his office–his personal domain–he’d want the truth. 

And he’d have it, because she was terribly afraid that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give him. 

Miserably, she whispered, “Yes, sir.”

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Letters Snippet

This is another snippet of a Dear Sir, I’m Yours prequel. I’ll be writing out several scenes over the next few weeks, alternating with more letters, and when the whole thing is done, I’ll package it all together as a pdf on the Free Reads page. For now, I’m calling this prequel “Letters” since I haven’t come up with another title. I’ll accumulate the links here in reverse chronological order if you need to catch up!

 
Snippet One
Letter One

Letter Two:
 

Dear Dr. Connagher:

 

So it should have been a clue that if you were quoting poetry…you were probably an English professor.  Which didn’t sound too bad, until I found out that your only open class is a senior-level class on the Romantic Period.  I admit, I was giddy and relieved, until I actually read the course description. 

 

Then to make matters worse, my suitemates knew somebody who took your class last year.  Thank you very much–now I’m terrified that I’ll fail my first class at Drury.  Why did your only open class have to be this one, your pet class, the one you use to “break” English majors too foolish to have changed their major to basket weaving already? 

 

What hope do I have of surviving your class?  Absolutely none whatsoever.  Yet the thought of dropping out before I even meet you makes me want to cry.

 

You can thank [name redacted to protect the innocent] for warning me that you require all students to contact you in formal letters, which is exactly why I’ve lost my mind enough to write not one but two letters to you already.  She also said that you despise the internet, and if anyone even brings up Google, e-mail, or Lord forgive us, cliffnotes.com, then we’d better get a head start for the Registrar’s Office for that withdrawal.

 

So while all my friends are out partying one last frantic weekend before having to drag themselves to class with a hangover, I’m settled into bed with a foot-thick tome of poetry, a dictionary, and every resource the librarian could suggest for a dolt who knows absolutely nothing about Shelley beyond Frankenstein.  Which I now know, thanks to you, wasn’t even written by the poet listed in the course description, but his wife.

 

I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m reading, but I keep picturing you in the hallway.  There were deep grooves about your mouth and your eyes were like dark storm clouds.  When I close my eyes, I can see your face, and I press kisses to each one of those lines until they fade away, and the only darkness that remains is in your eyes.  That darkness gives me cold chills and sends my heart pounding like a jackhammer, but I can’t look away. 

 

I want your eyes on me.  I want your darkness.  I want you.

 

Now, as I read this poem for the hundredth time, I hear your voice reading it, and I’ve never heard anything sexier in my entire life.  Just don’t ask me what the poem actually means, please, until I’ve had time to study a whole lot more.

 

Why isn’t it Monday yet?  This is so stupid.  I’ve done more work for your class than I’ve ever done in my entire life and the semester hasn’t even started!

 

Still yours,

 

~ Rae

 

P.S. Would it earn me any extra credit if you knew that I’d hunted down that snippet of poetry you quoted in the hall yesterday?

 

P.S.S. I guess not–I used Google to find out that you were quoting from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”

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Letters Snippet

This is another snippet of a Dear Sir, I’m Yours prequel.  I’ll be writing out several scenes over the next few weeks, alternating with more letters, and when the whole thing is done, I’ll package it all together as a pdf on the Free Reads page.  For now, I’m calling this prequel “Letters” since I haven’t come up with another title. I’ll accumulate the links here in reverse chronological order if you need to catch up!

Aside:  the poetry quote opening this section has an interesting little story.  If you read Dear Sir, you’ll learn that “Ozymandias” has special meaning in the story.  As I sat down last night to write this scene, I knew I wanted to open with Conn quoting some poetry, but I didn’t know what it was.  He was unhappy, even angry, and the poem had to speak of some kind of despair.  Not wanting to sit for hours browsing Shelley and Byron — as enjoyable as that would be — I went through a mental check list of all the poems from which he’d already quoted.  I thought, hey, what the heck, let’s start with Ozymandias and see if there’s anything I can use.

Voila.  The piece is absolutely perfect, and in a subtle way, ties back full circle with the main story itself.  I swear, I broke out in goosebumps.  I love it when things I picked seemingly at random months ago suddenly end up having a deeper meaning that I hadn’t anticipated!

Letter One

Snippet One:

“’Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.’”

The masculine voice froze her in place.  Other students bumped into Rae, knocking her aside, impatient in their rush to purchase their books or line up for a coveted class before it filled, but she couldn’t move. 

That voice…

She turned and saw two men standing outside the dean’s office, obviously professors by their air of respectability, experience, and age.  The man quoting poetry in that incredibly sexy voice couldn’t be more than ten years older than her, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he was a doddering old man with a cane.  His voice would have affected her the same way.

He quoted those lovely, haunting words of poetry in a rough, deep rumble that seemed to vibrate on the air with power.  Her body thrummed in response, rippling with the subtle resonation. 

If that incredible voice wasn’t enough to send her body into overdrive, his dark good looks and rugged face only increased her attraction.  He wore faded, soft denim that hugged his thighs and ass, work boots that had definitely seen the outdoors, and a plain baby blue Oxford shirt.  He’d rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, and the sight of his corded forearms made her breath hitch in her throat.  His hands were large, his forearms lined with muscle and sinew as though he was used to hard physical labor.

What on earth had the professor been doing to earn the forearms of a warrior?  She couldn’t help but wonder if his hands would be rough and calloused to match, as powerful and commanding as his voice.

He laughed, but the lines remained on his face, deeply grooving his mouth and between his eyes.  He looked grim and fierce, his eyes as blue as his shirt but steely, as though a thunderstorm roiled inside him.  Staring at him, she ached to earn the right to smooth those grim lines from his face with her lips and tongue.

Heat seared her face and she jerked her gaze away.  She didn’t know this man.  If he was a professor, then he was certainly off limits. 

Her stupid body didn’t care.  Her mouth felt dry, her eyes hot, her muscles tense and eager.  Her instincts demanded that she either flee or rush over and fling herself at his feet, warring back and forth between fierce attraction and downright terror.  If a man could turn her on with his voice alone, what would it be like to kiss him?  To feel those big hands sliding over her skin?  Or better yet, to lie helpless beneath that power, bound for his every whim?

Get a grip, Rae. 

She’d never had pervy thoughts about a professor before, but once her mind wandered into that territory, she couldn’t seem to clear away the idea of the wicked professor tutoring his teacher’s pet.  Or punishing her.

“Enough, Mason,” he retorted in a low voice that made her shudder.  “You have no idea what I need.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest and she couldn’t catch her breath.  Oh, God, but she could all too easily imagine what he might need.  What was wrong with her?  Why would she suddenly have visions of walking up to this man and begging him to allow her to strip off her clothes for him?  She didn’t know anything about him except that voice, and the torturous images he inspired.  She didn’t even know–

“Dr. Connagher, the dean will see you now.”

He disappeared into the dean’s office.  The door shut and Rae felt as though a rubber band inside her had snapped.  She stumbled over to rest her shoulder against the cold concrete wall, closing her eyes and concentrating on breathing.

His friend might not know what he needed, but the darkness in his eyes and the elegant roughness in his voice spoke volumes to her.  As soon as she could walk without wavering like she’d just left a frat party, she headed for the Registrar’s Office.  She could only hope that Dr. Connagher taught something other than Calculus or Physics, because come Monday morning, she was going to be sitting in the front row of his class.

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MayNoWriMo: Day 31

I MADE IT!

Sorry for the screaming, but I’m pretty darned pleased.  If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have been sure I wouldn’t make it.  I just didn’t have any fire left in me.  I was distracted, dismayed, and generally dissastisfied.  But that’s why challenges like this work for me.  I simply can’t stand not meeting that commitment.  If I begin to say to myself that it’s impossible, then I begin to work harder. 

So many times this month I wanted to give up and work on a more fun, exciting, easier, [insert adjective here] project.  I had a bright, shiny new idea that I wanted to tackle.  I had a release, and another in the upcoming month.  I had website pages to update, reviews to hunt down, kids getting out of school….

You name it — I had an excuse for it.  But the challenge kept me on track. 

Almost 10K in two days to finish.  My wrists held up pretty good (although they may be sore tomorrow) — but I’ve been sleeping in my splints all month to be safe.  The story isn’t finished, either, so I guess this craziness continues into June.  However, I sort of wrote myself into a hole today, and I need to decide whether to continue down this path or not.  Lilias learned some key information “too early” for my plot, so now I’ve got to decide what changes, or if it’s feasible to keep her in the dark.  I like having smart characters that act — and not stupid characters that sit around waiting for someone to give them a clue — so I think I’ll be tweaking my stupid outline yet again.  :wink::roll:

 

No rest for the weary!  Anybody up for a JuNoWriMo???

50,368 / 100000
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MayNoWriMo: Day 30

Wow, I never thought I’d be this close!  Today I got an incredible amout of work done, thanks in part to getting up somewhat early while the rest of the family snoozed the morning away.  I had 3,494 words before they got up!  Then I had another late afternoon session while the monsters played on the blow-up water slide (1020 words), and then while watching TV tonight, I chipped away at the scene and wrapped it up, bringing my day’s total up to 5,833 (this does include some words from last night too but I didn’t make an update so I threw them together).

MayNoWriMo total: 46,233.  Only 3767 to go!

46,233 / 100000

I’m too tired to pull up a snippet. Tomorrow is church and laundry, while the monsters are also wanting to go swimming over at Aunt BB and Uncle J’s apartment complex. It would be heavenly if That Man would take them and let me stay home….

Don’t hold your breath.

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MayNoWriMo: Day 28

Despite my lack of updates, I have been steadily toiling away on my MayNoWriMo project, Arcana.  50K by 5/31 is looking rather grim, but I’m pleased with what I’ve accomplished so far.  Tonight, I broke 40K and worked through a particularly difficult stretch of “new” material.  I have a murder mystery on my hand, and some surprising developments I hadn’t accounted for.

And yes, I deviated once again from my ridiculously detailed outline, but after 2-3 unplanned sections, I was able to right my course back to the outline and picked up the next planned scene accordingly.  There are some rough patches in this draft, but I’m not going to worry about that now.  That will be Revision Hell Deux!

MayNoWriMo total:  40,400 words

40,400 / 100000

Snippet:  In this section, we’re introduced to the antagonist.  Well, he’s the obvious antagonist.  There are other more arcane players that aren’t fully explained until later, but Aubrey drives the main conflict of the story.  I hope I got the clothing details right. 

This takes place at a small gathering, of which Lilias has this to say:    In the long, illustrious past of Nocturna Castle, there had never been a more tedious party.

“My dear Wilfreda has made quite a conquest.”

“How wonderful, and so early in the Season?  I wasn’t aware that you’d already been to Town.”

“We haven’t departed yet,” the lady preened.  “We shall still go, of course, but Wilfreda is quite taken with the young man, and he’s very suitable; not a grand lord, certainly, but his family name is impeccable and he stands to inherit a barony.”

Lilias made a sound that she hoped to be appropriately impressed.  She caught Violet with an imploring gaze, but her fickle sister launched into another country reel; she’d charge over and blast Mr. Nevarre with her fury, but she wouldn’t dare risk getting caught in Lady Mouls’ long-winded recounts of gossip, not even for a bit of Society news.

“You should know him, at least his name,” Lady Mouls said, jerking Lilias’s gaze back to her.  The smug glint in the older woman’s eyes made her stomach tighten.  “Oh, do forgive any impropriety, but he accompanied us tonight as Wilfreda’s escort.  Where are they…oh, there!”  Lady Mouls waved her hanky at her daughter and cooed.  “Why didn’t you tell me your husband’s family was visiting?”

Lilias’s heart beat ponderously, as though her blood had thickened and congealed to syrup.  Slowly, she turned her head in the direction indicated.

“Mr. Aubrey Slymere, such a handsome man.”  Lady Mouls sighed happily.  “Wilfreda is quite beside herself with joy, I assure you.  He stated that he was your husband’s cousin, so I’m sure you don’t mind that he accompanied us this evening.”

Mr. Slymere possessed the same golden hair, high, classic forehead, and proud hawk’s nose as Lilias’s deceased husband.  In fact, they could have been brothers.  Here, too, was the London dandy that Violet had hoped to meet:  fine double-breasted cutaway coat in sapphire velvet, white waistcoat quilted with sparkling golden thread to match the buttons on his coat, and spotless white breeches and stockings.  With such a high collar and the snowy white cravat twisted in a tall confection at his throat, he surely couldn’t turn his head without risk of injuring himself. 

Sensing the attention, he turned and escorted his companion in their direction.  For all his charm and civility, Lilias felt a blast of cold winter’s ice creeping through her veins.  Grimsgate taught only the darker arcane, and if this man were truly her husband’s cousin, she knew very well what sort of magic he might possess.

Soul darkening, life stealing blood magic.

Mr. Slymere’s mouth curved in the darkly sensual smile of a cat grinning at the frantic bird flopping on the ground with a broken wing, and the castle nexus erupted about her.  Raw energy bubbled up from the earth, molten power at her command.  It filled her without her consciously opening her gift and burned away the dread ice that had threatened to paralyze her. 

Kill him now.

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Reviewers, Readers with Blogs

I’m looking for reviewers for The Road to Shanhasson.  It’s proving slightly more difficult than usual because this is book two of a trilogy, and Road will ONLY make sense if you’ve read Rose too.  I can’t send it blindly to the normal romance review sites if I can’t guarantee the same reviewer will be assigned.  And, well, Road isn’t exactly standard Romancelandia fare, with violence, extreme sexual situations, and some really really bad villains.  

Then there’s Gregar, the sadomasochist assassin.

So if you have a blog or website, you’d like to read some smoking hot romantic fantasy, and you’re not grossed out by violence and blood, please drop me a line or comment here and I will contact you. 

A few of you have already read Road, so if you’re so kind as to blog about it, let me know so I can link to you.  (Let me know if it’s okay for me to pull an excerpt from your post to advertise both here and at Drollerie Press.) 

The first two chapters of Road are now posted if you’d like to take a gander first.

Thank you!

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Project Planning

I’ve been thinking a lot about my next project, my career as a writer, and what sort of stories I want to write next.  This has been coming for awhile, I suppose, but this post Kiss of Death: The Renaissance Writer really brought it to a head for me.

One of my weakest skills as a writer is categorizing my own work.  Back around 2007, I finally made it out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death and decided that I had to write for me.  I had learned what kind of story motivated and moved me:  dark, mythology, sacrifice, blood, violence, romance, etc.  Might sound like a strange mix, but that’s me (that’s why May calls me the Sister of the Severed Hand).  Every single thing I’ve written involves mythology and blood in some way.

Except Dear Sir, I’m Yours, which is a whole other beast.  I’ll come back to that thought in a minute.

So I set out to work on the Maya story.  It’s a contemporary setting, heavily based on Maya mythology.  I plotted it heavily — three major story arcs, three POV characters, each with their own goal, coming together in the end for a big show down.  Timing was crucial, placement, etc.  It’s still got problems that I hope to tackle this summer, but I’m really pleased with the level of work I managed on that story.  

The problem?  It’s hard to categorize.  I wanted to write an urban fantasy, but knew I hadn’t.  I’d been calling it contemporary fantasy.   Then May suggested it was more like a Preston/Child thriller.  

I was like, huh?  I never set out to write a thriller.  Yeah, I like darkness, violence, suspense, etc. but a thriller?  Really?  But as I thought about their books I’ve read — Relic, Reliquary, Blood Mountain — I began to see some similarities in the pacing and feel, although I’d say the Maya story has more fantasy than a typical Preston/Child book. It’s still set firmly in the contemporary world and mostly “normal” tools are used to defeat the bad guys.  Magic is not rampant in the world (yet).  i.e. The characters’ world view is very much “normal” until they see the proof unveiled before their eyes.  The book also has a sci-fi feel — even though magic is the mechanism surrounding the Bloodgates, not science or technology.  It feels a lot like Stargate, which I admit is part of the original premise.

So I’m sitting here, reading about that Renaissance Writer who’s an agent’s nightmare, and I realize that’s a warning I need to pay attention to.  How am I going to write an agent query for a thriller, while everything in my backlist is fantasy, sci-fi, or contemporary erotic romance?  

I’m not tackling projects just because I think it’s an “easy sell” as in their example, but I do have very wide interests, as widely as I read.  I mean, my current wip is a Regency Fantasy.  On my storyboards, I have a sci-fi Regency/Steampunk thing in progress.  Don’t even ask about all the strange things I have in the back of my mind, or stored on my harddrive.  (e.g. remember the sports mystery That Man begged me to write?)

So what’s a Renaissance Writer to do?  I know from past experience that I can’t write “to market.”  That leads back to the Valley of the Shadow of Death and I refuse to take that path.  I have to write what I love, with fire and passion and blood on the page.  However, I also need to take a care and ensure that I order my projects in a smart way.  I have to make sure I’m building readership for the projects I have sold, and work toward projects that could share cross-readership.  

Everything is based in fantasy — except Dear Sir.  So as I’ve been mulling over my short and long-term goals, I decided the next project needs to support that readership.  To that end, I’ll work on Victor’s story next.  I’ll build and plot it (while I have 10K in previously written sections — I don’t think I have enough story for a 60-80K book) while I return briefly to Revision Xibalba.  I’ll sub the Maya book while I work on Victor’s story.  Once that first draft is done, I’ll set it aside to work on Revision Hell for Arcana.  I want to keep the fantasy-related pipe filled, definitely, but I need to continue to build the romantic BDSM side as well.

Ironically, there are quite a few ties in the romantic threads from Dear Sir over to, say Road to Shanhasson.  Gregar taught me a lot about sadomasochism.  But someone who loves Dear Sir won’t necessarily try a romantic fantasy trilogy.

So, that’s the plan for the next six months.  Back to MayNoWriMo.

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MayNoWriMo: Day 17

Continued reading through my sections and making adjustments as I went to bring everything “up” to meet my outline. All the niggling little sequence issues that were bothering me have been fixed, and in the process, I added 1504 words! Then I finished the next new scene last night. All in all, a pretty productive weekend.

Up later than D&E this morning, so I may not get much done until tonight.

28,178 / 100000

Snippet:  This is the last part of the scene between Violet and Lilias that I was sharing last week.  This bit is rather prophetic, or at least foreshadows Violet’s character arc through this story.  I wanted to capture, too, the back and forth relationship of sisters:  love and understanding one moment; competition the next; angry words spoke in haste.

Lilias averted her face.  “I don’t trust myself.”

Violet’s chest felt constricted, as though her corset had been tied too tightly.  She’d never been in this position before:  her sister needed her.  Lilias needed to hear the right words to encourage her, as she’d encouraged her younger sister all these years.  What if Violet said the wrong thing?  Would it push her unstable sister over the edge into madness?

Something flapped above their heads, drawing their eyes to the sky.  A black bird swooped down and snagged a mouse a dozen paces away, and then soared toward the South Tower. 

“It’s still here.”  Lilias glanced at her, delight bringing some color back to her cheeks.  “I saw him last night, but I didn’t know it was a raven.  We haven’t had ravens at Nocturna for nearly a thousand years.”

Smiling at her sister, Violet suddenly knew exactly what to say.  “I trust you, Lily, with my life.  I love you.”

Her sister wrapped her up in a fierce hug that made them both cry, but this time, the tears were happier instead of tasting of ash and sorrow.

“I love you, too, dearest Vi.”  Lilias stared up at the South Tower, smiling at that fool bird.  Why did a raven mean so much to her?  If Violet had known, she would have written to every acquaintance they’d ever made and begged a scraggly dirty bird.  “Things are changing, for the better, I think.  Can you feel it?”

All Violet felt was the lingering threat of ozone and boiling clouds on the horizon, regardless of clear blue skies and green growing things.  However, she merely forced a smile and nodded.  She’d been in a foul enough mood the past few weeks since the school had re-opened; she wouldn’t ruin this fragile moment of recovery with some dire threat she couldn’t even find the words to express.

“A gentleman arrived awhile ago inquiring about an item Father had borrowed,” Lilias said.  “Did you know of any book he might have sought from Egypt?”

“No.  Is he handsome?”  Her sister merely blinked at her, so Violet added, “the gentleman?  Did he pass through London?”

“He didn’t inform me of his travel itinerary,” Lilias replied, a wry twist to her mouth.  “He’s coming this evening; you can inquire of his travels then.”

Excitement bubbled out of Violet’s mouth, a warbling song of laughter.  She skipped ahead and twirled, laughing more when her straw hat slipped from her head.  She untied the ribbons and swung it like a slingshot.  “At last, an interesting gentleman and a party!  It’s almost as good as a Season.”

“He’s staying in the carriage house, so you will have multiple opportunities to ensnare him.”

Something in her sister’s voice made Violet pause her dance.  Lilias smiled, still, but there was a tightness about her eyes, and her lips were compressed. 

A surge of femininity swelled within Violet, a sweet, fierce sensual power that she’d never felt before.  She’d never been able to compete with her sister for a beau before.  “I wager he’ll ask me to dance before you.”

“There will be no dancing tonight.”

“Then he’ll ask me to help him find this book.” 

Lilias didn’t respond, walking instead faster.  She was nearly to the door, and then it would be students and lessons.  She would be the eldest, assured and powerful, and Violet would be reduced to the little sister in need of guidance, tolerated, not needed.  This lighthearted moment would be gone as quickly as that ugly bird. 

Desperate to hold on to this strange and wonderful moment of adulthood, Violet threw back her head and held her arms out wide, her face tilted to the life-giving sun.  She filled herself with power, drawing more, more, sweet and thick and untamed.  Molten honey poured through her veins instead of blood.  Lightning crackled through her mind, blasting away lingering shadows of grief.

She wove strands of power high into the sky, seeking rain clouds and rainbows.  She’d coax a gentle spring rain while the sun yet shone, casting rainbows and crystals of light.  Yet all too quickly, the sweetness bordered on pain.  She couldn’t hold nearly as much as Lilias, and there was no moisture in the air that she could draw. 

Her gifts were lightning and wind, tornadoes and rain, fierce in the moment but too capricious to hold in the palm of one’s hand for long.  Power melted away like those wisps of clouds, leaving her bereft and slightly embarrassed, else surely she would never have said, “And he’ll ask to marry me, too, and perhaps I shall say yes.  I’ll be gone to London within the month and sailing to Karnak!”

Her sister gave her a look of such sad censure that Violet drew in a sharp breath as though she’d been slapped. 

“Oh, Violet, you know nothing of this gentleman.  Why would you say such a thing?  You haven’t even met him!  How could you possibly think you would find him a suitable match?”

Stinging and feeling unusually weary from straining to use her magic, Violet retorted, “I shall never make such a mistake in choosing a husband as you.”

Lilias recoiled and covered her hand with her mouth, her fingers shaking.

“Lily,” Violet breathed, tears spilling in horror.  How could she have said such a thing?  Why did her own thoughts and words so often betray her so foolishly and childishly?  “I didn’t mean it.  You know how much I adore you.”

Her sister turned away and pushed open the door.  “You shall have your Season, Violet.  I’ll see to it.  And you may choose any husband you wish.”

“Lily–”

“I’ll introduce you to Mr. Nevarre this very evening, but I warn you:  I find him very cold and dangerous.  Choose wisely, dearest.  You may only have one opportunity at happiness.”