[I just realized I hadn’t shared this illustration here, and I need it for the Extras and Freebies page 😁][it is also in the limited-edition eBook of Mirth, Part One].
Her Royal Higness Princesss Euphrosyne. Aka Mirth. Awry. Heir to the United European Nation. Character illustration by Nicole Deal (@nicole.deal.art).
CONTENT NOTE: language
The door to the suite opens. Anne hustles in. She’s wearing a light-gold full-length wrap-style silk dress. She pauses just inside the door, blinking at me, then taking in Sully, then Bolan.
“Oh,” she finally says. “Good. Sully. You’ll help Mirth get into her dress? Mimi and Tavi have been roped into service by the Mertons. Apparently, our lack of ability to house all the staff they would have preferred to bring is … irksome.”
No titles in private. No formalities.
Unless I impose them.
But only after I explicitly lift those protocols in the first place.
That was Sully’s point. About protocol.
“Yes, of course.” Sully grins widely and wickedly. “Why else would I be in Her Royal Highness’s suite?”
Anne huffs, playfully pleased. “I have your father waiting to escort you,” she says to me.
“Escort me?” I echo, abruptly displeased.
“We’ll go straight through to dinner,” Anne says, ignoring my tone. “The rest of the guests will start arriving around nine for the ball.”
“Of course,” I say. I did know that already, but apparently I’m still having issues with holding everything in my head all at once. As if new information is at constant war with the continual grief and the continual state of overwhelm.
Anne casts a look over all three of us again, then smirks. “Ten minutes. Or I’ll send in the twins.”
Sully raises his hands in surrender.
Anne steps back the way she came, snagging the door closed.
“Well, this is going to be a blast,” Bolan says sarcastically.
“It will be awful to do sober,” Sully says blithely over his shoulder.
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“Not today. But I do like it when you beg.”
I huff, spinning away from them both.
Sully attempts to follow me, but stops instantly at my snapped, “No!”
Bolan’s laughter follows me back through to my bedroom, then beyond the door that I slam in my wake.
I put on the decadently voluminous silk ballgown skirt and the beaded bustier. Then I carefully slip a diamond-crusted platinum coronet into my perfectly coiffed hair.
Because if they want a fucking princess, I’ll give them a fucking princess.
– Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One
Waterfell Castle from the Mirth duology. Scenery illustration by Kateryna Vitkovska.
The early morning is dark, cloud shrouded, though a half moon intermittently shimmers through thinner patches of that cloud. Tiny flakes of snow filter down from the otherwise starless sky. Not even a hint of the pending sunrise tinges the horizon as I slip out a side door. I immediately dart across the short yard to half-jog down the narrow stone stairway that twists down from the cliff on which the towering edifice of Waterfell Castle is perched. Kilometers away, deep in a valley nestled between neighboring peaks, I glimpse the faint, sporadic lights that emanate from the nearest town, before the path at the bottom of the stairway abruptly changes direction.
The few castle guards, both mages and shifters, patrolling the various ramparts and posted in the towers above ignore me. Not that I look back.
My breath comes out in chilled puffs.
Tiny mage lights trigger as I descend, situated at ankle height so as not to compromise my sight. If I were a null without the ability to actively wield essence, I’d be stumbling around in the dark.
Despite my light sensitivity, I’ve never been much of a fan of the dark. Though curling up on a winter’s eve next to a fire with a book, sipping a hot chocolate, and reading by candlelight is a hazy memory …
Or possibly an unrequited dream.
Before that stupid kiss. Before he shoved me away with pure pain etched across his face, as if I … as if my touch was … is …
I resolve to shred that stupid list of names the moment I get back to my rooms. I wasn’t thinking … in fact, I’m still not certain I moved the pen of my own volition. I never would have rationally chosen to put his name down.
He belongs to Armin more than me, anyway.
Belonged.
Past tense.
I can’t remember the last time I managed to maintain any level of rationality, not even for a full day. Was it the day before I felt my chest crack open and my soul sunder? While I attended some fucking charity event, commenting on the pretty fucking flowers and smiling at children, even as I wondered why my chest was hurting and my texts were going unanswered. Assuming the entire time that Armin had gone on a bender or was romancing someone new for the weekend instead of checking in with me. A rare but occasional occurrence when he needed … when he needed to run …
Just as I now practically ran, tripping down the path, through the snowy early morning.
Had I still been rational as I raced to the mountain township to identify my brother? Before I found him so … empty, and still. So silent.
Armin. Armin was even more trapped than I am.
Or rather, more trapped than I used to be. But never as trapped as I am now.
Because my father never would have forced Armin to choose bond mates only six months after my death. Armin would have been granted more time.
– Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One [excerpt from Chapter Two]
‘Rath’ Guerra. Shifter. Illustration by Nicole Deal.
I unlock the door as the engines of the vehicles shut off behind me. I don’t have to look back to know that Cayley is climbing out of the car, or that Grinder has returned with Doc Z and Presh’s brother, Rath. Their life force is so robust, I don’t need eyes with which to see them.
But I feel drawn, even momentarily compelled, to look back. Just once.
At Rath.
He’s so huge, easily six and a half feet, that his large bike looks regular-sized as he swings his leg off it. His hair is brown, chopped short. As he removes his helmet, he favors his left shoulder, almost imperceptibly. I can’t see the color of his eyes from this distance, but his features are broad, arresting.
‘Rought’ Guerra. Shifter. Illustration by Nicole Deal.
The engine hasn’t even died before the driver’s-side door is opening, and a male steps out — dark-blond hair, naturally tanned skin, and shoulders so broad I’m surprised that he slips out of the car so agilely. Though he is clearly a shifter.
The moment his booted feet hit the ground and the energy underpinning the property rises to ghost his footsteps, I know that he is a … presence, a power. He’s in black jeans and a light-gray henley. He lays his hand on top of the Camaro, pivoting toward me — not bothering to look at the barn or the property or anything else as he reaches to shut the car door with his other hand.
He meets my gaze. His eyes are light colored, either blue or green, but I can’t tell which at this distance.
He’s still moving, hand running across the top of the car, then down the back window, then fingers only along the trunk.
He fucking caresses the fucking car as he crosses alongside it, then continues steadily toward me. And for a moment of utter insanity, I want it to be my curves under those fingertips.
The passenger-side door thunks closed. I feel Presh’s presence as well. But I can’t tear my gaze away from the golden god in worn black jeans taking long, steady strides toward me. I’m locked in his gaze.
The nearer he gets, the more I see … in his expression, in his body language, in the way his essence entwines with that of the property.
I’m not lightheaded.
I’m not beguiled or enchanted.
The nearer he gets, the more anchored I feel.
Not frozen. Not overwhelmed.
I’m in this moment. Breathing it. Savoring it. As if … as if … my very soul has been starved? And he is … he is …
– Awry (Conduit 1), Chapter 10 (slightly edited for spoilers)
Precious ‘Presh’ Guerra. Awry. Illustration by Nicole Deal.
“I can’t push you,” I say gently. “Some choices have to be your own. Not everything is determined by fate alone.”
Startled, her eyes flick up to meet mine. “Can you get me home?”
“I’ll die trying,” I say, aware that I’ve uttered my own destiny — a single, short thread of it, at least — as the words fall from my lips.
I’ve never been great at keeping my mouth shut, even when I’m trying. Or ignoring a knowing even when doing so was in my best interest.
I reach for her.
She steps closer to accept my hand.
The thin threads already connecting us solidify so suddenly and sharply that it’s like a punch to the gut. I lose my breath within the momentary onslaught of sensation. It settles into an unadulterated rightness. More than a simple thread of destiny.
I’ve never felt the like before. Even accepting my inheritance was less … steady, less resolved. But most essence-wielding is like that. Most essence, most power, grows slowly, and not necessarily steadily.
“What … what was that?” she asks in a whisper.
I meet her gaze, blinking and still feeling a little out of body. “Fate,” I whisper back. “It seems … we are meant to be here, in this moment and beyond.”
She smiles. It’s tentative, shaky. Her grip on my hand is almost punishing.
“What’s your name, sweetness?”
“Presh …” She exhales hope along with the gift of her name, fortifying the connection between us further. Then she inhales strength — I can see it flooding through her — and gives me more. “Precious Guerra.”
I lean into her, taller by a half-dozen inches. My necklace swings forward, drawing her attention again. “Zaya Gage,” I say. Then I add, teasingly, “Granddaughter of Necessity, Daughter of Darkness and Night.” Even though I’m speaking the utter truth. As I always must when I’m about to walk the path of my own destiny.
To my death, I had no doubt.
Presh giggles quietly, as I’d hoped she would. Though depending on how much of the family history I’m willing to accept as pure truth, I’m not lying.
The dark-haired sorcerer swathed in black tactical gear at my side ran his hand down my spine — or as much of it as he could reach while I was wearing my dual blades sheathed across my back. His conflicting emotions filtered through to me even as I peered through the magically enhanced binoculars I had trained on a tiny, rocky island in the middle of nowhere.
Literally, nowhere.
Loaded into a heavily armored, magically fortified helicopter, we were hovering over what was practically the midway point between the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea, the southern extents of the Arctic Ocean. Though technically, we were off the northern coast of Norway, we’d left that coast behind two hours ago. I couldn’t see even a shadow of the mainland, not even with the enhanced binoculars.
Five days had passed since we’d been sent the first text message from Samantha and Daniel’s kidnapper, and the sorcerer who’d all but shackled himself to my side was still angry. At the situation, yes. But also at me specifically. That didn’t stop him from reaching out, though, or touching me tenderly in the very brief moments we’d grabbed on our way to finding — and hopefully liberating — my blood-bound teammates.
Aiden had his own pair of binoculars. They cut without difficulty through the gloom of the cloudy night — which wasn’t actual night, because the sun never set in this part of the world in June. But they also somehow highlighted magic, picking up the energy that emanated from the magically inclined as well as magical constructs, then tagging that energy in a medium shade of blue that was slightly lighter than the color of Aiden’s power.
It was closing in on 3:00 a.m. Despite the cloaking on the helicopter and the clouds obscuring the midnight sun, we’d waited until early morning to further minimize our visibility.
Even heavily cloaked in cloud, the sun sliding along the horizon, while never rising or setting, unsettled me. Not that I would ever admit that out loud. We’d been moving too quickly and crossing too many borders to do more than snatch a nap here or there, completely ignoring time zones as we passed through. So I blamed the jet lag for the disconcertion, then ignored it.
To my left, Christopher was outfitted in cool-weather tactical gear like Aiden and me, though with fewer pockets than the sorcerer. He wasn’t bothering to keep watch out his side of the helicopter. His magic was a constant low-grade hum on my upper spine while he shuffled his oracle cards and called out quiet commands to our ground team of two over the comms. Mostly, though, he had been content to allow that team to implement the plan it had taken us three days to cobble together, as they navigated their way to the island, then into the research station that occupied the site’s northern tip.
According to our intel, nine nonmagicals occupied the entirety of Bear Island. Researchers. But I had tuned out what exactly they were researching on a barren rock of an island in the Arctic Ocean, more interested in how we were planning to get them out of our way.
Endings and Empathy is the sixth and final book in the Amplifier Series, which is set in the same universe as the Dowser, Oracle, Reconstructionist, Archivist, and Misfits of the Adept Universe series. Click here for the reading order of the entire Adept Universe.
I’ve been working on a new book/series/universe for a sum total of two days, and absolutely loving it. It might all come to nothing, but it will, at minimum, get my focus back on the creative and get me out of the slump I’ve been mired in for the last couple of weeks.
The raw, untitled excerpt below is unproofed, unedited, and offered up just for fun. My first present tense narrative, so it is undoubtfully a rough read in places, please be gentle with me.
Random shot of MCD’s backyard: the first crocuses of 2023. [A late bloom this year].
The girl at the counter is maybe fifteen. Tiny but long-limbed, her multicolored scraggly hair hides her face as she bows her head over a greasy plate of fries. But I’d seen her deep blue, almost violet eyes as she cast her gaze around the cafe upon entering. Her two companions, who couldn’t look more like stereotypical bikers if they tried — leather jackets, beards, and club patches and all — are easily three times her size. Their grip on her upper arms is beyond proprietary.
The violet eyes are as rare as the power the girl has simmering in her veins.
But it’s the glimpse of the raw skin on the girl’s wrists I catch when she pushes up the sleeves of her overly large, ratty sweater that disturbs me more than the eyes or the power I can feel all the way from the other side of the cafe.
I touch the amulet I wear under my own sweater. Unlike the girl’s hand-me-down, my sweater is a luxuriously soft, thin-knit black cashmere, intentionally oversized and tailored to be figure flattering. For spending the day in the car and the cooler weather, I paired it with merino wool-lined faux leather leggings and lace-up handmade black leather boots.
The girl’s legs are bare. And dirty. If she’s wearing shorts or a skirt, I can’t see either. She isn’t carrying a purse nor does she appear to have a phone. Though anyone else her age — magically inclined or not — is usually glued to at least one device at all times, even this deep into the so-called wilds of the Cascadian territories.
The cafe had gone silent when the trio had entered. And the murmur of conversation is slow to pick up in the aftermath of their bombastically noisy arrival. An older woman had hustled out from the back kitchen area, smiling broadly — wearing the expression like it was armor — and nudging the other, young, female server aside to take the bikers’ orders. She — the owner of the cafe, I assume — ignores the violet-eyed teenager.
Everyone ignores the girl wedged between the bikers perching on the stools at the front counter. Their huge thighs press against hers, caging her between them as they mow through their burgers.
The younger server, her curly blond hair streaked pink and pulled up in a bun, sets my Caesar salad in front of me, cocking her hip against the edge of my table, effectively blocking my gaze of the girl and the bikers. Deliberately?
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“Anything else?” she asks stiffly, her pad in hand and expression guarded.
I glance at the salad. It’s taken longer to make and serve than the burgers and fries the trio ordered. Served in a large bowl, the creamy dressing is so thick it’s difficult to discern the green of the lettuce. I should have known better than to order a salad in a roadside diner.
I open my mouth to ask for the bill. But then, my magic speaking for me, I say, “A chocolate milkshake and chicken strips … to go, please,” instead.
The server frowns.
Not completely aware of what I’m doing — born on an innate knowing, the certain to be stupid and utterly foolhardy plan unfolding with each choice I make in the moment — I reach into the side pocket of my bag, pulling out the fold of twenty dollars bills I’d shoved in the side pocket before leaving Seattle. The ‘Wilds’ aka the stretches of neutral, and not-so-neutral territory, between the major cities still prefer cash exchanges. Though the cafe is outfitted with a fairly sleek tablet set to the side of the cash register on the far end of the counter, near the front door. Peeling three green holographically stamped bills from my short stack, I set them on the edge of the table. “I’m actually in a bit of a hurry.”
The server’s gaze flicks over me, then across my table to take in the brand new top-of-the-line phone and the designer sunglasses set next to my elbow. Both items are ridiculously expensive, but though I could, now, rather suddenly, afford such things, I didn’t pay full price for them. I don’t pay full price for anything. Beyond the windows, the sky is gray, rain threatening. But I’d wear the sunglasses in the bright interior of the cafe if I could get away with it. My eyes are perpetually sensitive to light. And for those who know what they are looking at, they firmly mark me as other. In this small outpost, at least. The sensitive sight is one of the drawbacks of the type of power I wield as effortlessly as breathing. The other not-so-effortless castings and manipulations I can do, again a fairly new unlocking of my abilities, come with a far steeper price.
The server is still checking me out, or rather trying to figure me out, shifting her gaze to the large black leather bag on the bench seat beside me. It’s more understated but also worth more than the phone and sunglasses put together.
I add another twenty to the pile of bills on the edge of the table, though it is possible that doing so will make me even more memorable. My actions are being guided by that same flicker of knowing, and unless it comes with a miasma of death and destruction, I usually follow my own innate senses.
Hell, to be completely clear, if only to myself, I usually follow whichever way my magic leads, headlong into mayhem and heartache.
The server sniffs offishly then picks up the eighty dollars and tucks it into her bra in a practiced and minimal move. A tattoo rings her wrist. At first, it appears to be a string of daisies, like those necklaces that some kids make in movies and storybooks. A purely intentional choice, given that her name tag also reads, Daisy. But, hovering at the beginning of what is starting to feel like a major knowing, my unintentional focus reveals a shimmer of numbers hidden underneath, etched into the delicate skin of the underside of her wrist. The numbers are a slave tattoo. The shimmer only someone like me can detect is a twist of fate manacled around her wrist. It’s old and stretched, though she herself is in her early twenties at most, and she’ll wear it — her entire fate anchored in it — until she greets her death.
I look away quickly before she notices and understands what I’ve seen of her.
I shouldn’t have stopped for lunch, pulled so far off the highway. I should have driven straight through from Seattle to Portland and then cut out to the coast. Not because I’m vulnerable or memorable, but because I shouldn’t get involved.
The server tucks her pad in the pocket of her white apron, her gaze flicking to the window, to the parking lot. Two huge motorbikes — the massive noise makers the bikers pulled up on — occupy the spot directly across from the front door, but the server curls her upper lip at the 1972 Silver BMW 3.0 CSI parked in the very last spot adjacent to the windows, to the booth I’m currently occupying, instead.
“Nice ride,” she sneers, either pissed or jealous. Hard to tell.
“My uncle’s,” I say, only partly lying. Mostly because he’s dead, I never met him, and he’d been just a few more generations removed than ‘uncle’ implies.
She snorts, stepping away and crossing around the counter — instead of in front of it, which would put her in arms reach of the bikers — to input my new order on the tablet at the far corner of the counter, next to the cash register. She makes an obvious effort to gaze into the kitchen through the passthrough window, instead of looking ahead of herself while walking. Beyond simply ignoring the bikers and the girl, she’s actively trying to avoid drawing their attention.
I wonder how much market share the local biker club holds in the local slave trade. Then I shove the thought away. Not my business. Really, really not.
I, contrarily, instantly set my gaze on the violet-eyed teenager again, already knowing without actually formulating a plan, that I am about to do something really stupid. I am about to follow a prompt from the universe, snag a thread of fate and twist it to achieve an outcome that isn’t technically mine to direct. Likely more than one thread, and in hindsight, I’d already swayed onto this path rather thoughtlessly, from the moment I pulled off the highway and taken a fifteen-minute detour.
But at least I’d have a milkshake and chicken strips, right? Yeah, I just went with the random requests that occasionally filtered through me from the universe. Well, most of the time.
– Conduit 1, an Alternate Universe Urban Fantasy, first draft
“I don’t have the authority,” she said, actually quivering. She didn’t seem to know where to look, flicking her fear-widened eyes between Christopher, Aiden, Daniel, and me.
“Asked and answered, Socks,” Christopher said mildly.
“Yeah, but you’re so pretty clairvoyant,” Becca cooed without looking up. “Emma gives off a more I’ll-rip-out-your-heart-and-eat-it vibe without even trying.”
Christopher snorted.
“That would be a highly ineffectual way to murder someone,” I said stiffly.
Everyone gathered laughed quietly.
Not including the healer.
Which was fine, because I really hadn’t been joking.
#QuickFAQByMCD: the preorder will be available just as soon as all the scheduling is confirmed (likely late March 2023). And yes, this is the final book in the Amplifier Series.
*MCD note* no release date for Amplifier 6 yet, but likely March 2023 b/c of the upcoming holidays and my Tenth Anniversary Kickstarter for Dowser 1 in Jan 2023.
