The Fractured Arcana By Steven J Morris – Presented By Silver Dagger Book Tours

Elliah ~ 1

My mother told me many times that all adolescents feel likethey don’t belong, but… I really didn’t. So I spent my free time away fromother elves, on my own but for the animals… they didn’t understand how broken Iwas. And I was quite pleased with my current find, so I snarled when a noisebehind me scared away the drakeling that had settled in my hands. Black with apattern of red scales along its spine, its body the thickness of my finger, ittook flight with a flurry of thin leathery wings and disappeared behind amassive brown trunk.

“The real ones are much more intimidating,” saidan unfamiliar voice.

Time slowed as I tensed to run, shocked that I’d let myguard down so much that anyone had gotten that close. How many lurked behindme? On the outskirts of town, in the thick of the woods near the river, I hadexpected solitude.

“Stay, Bereft. I am not afraid,” said the voice.His words provoked me.

“No one’s afraid of me,” Iblurted. Bitterness stained my words as surely as the pollen of the bloodcupshad stained my ragged clothes.

I turned away from the vanished drakeling to focus on theintruder who’d scared it away. A man. No, I corrected myself, someonemy age. Someone not quite old enough for adults to consider one of theirown, but too old to call a child.

But not Bereft. No other elf shared that with me.

The newcomer was slightly taller than me with a thin frame,his light hair hanging long, wild, and tangled. He was new to the village—Iwould have noticed an elf with skin so light. I’d heard whispers of him atschool. Kethryllia had called him Salt-kissed, and I’d wondered what thatmeant, but his light skin answered that question. He’d undoubtedly caughtwhispers about me, heard of my… condition. Bereft. Yet at that moment, Ithought only of the hours of coaxing I’d spent to draw the little drakelinginto my grasp, and that the stupid elf had scared it away. I wanted to punchhim.

“Maybe they should be,” he said, taking a stepback, though it would have taken me two leaps to get to him, and he’d have mepinned in one, if he had any skill with magic at all. But I’d prepared a leapalready, only not in his direction. As I sprung away, he continued, raising hisvoice, “And you’re right, they’re not afraid of you.”

I landed with a tree between us. His magic wouldn’t be ableto snag me there. Unless he was very good at it.

“They’re afraid of what you represent.”

Continue the ThaumatropicRoots Series

Magic is asnatural as breathing in Elliah’s world — except to her. Born without a singlespark in a war that runs on it, she has nothing but her will and her refusal toaccept the limits everyone else has already decided for her. This is whathappens when the world writes you out of the story, and you refuse to leave.

 

Get them:

Motherof Trees

Bonesof Cenaedth

Secretsof Deara

Shepherdsof Truth

The Guardian of thePalace

The Guardian League Book 1

Part of the Fractured Arcana Universe

by Steven J. Morris

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Magic isn’t real.Red Hernandez is very sure of that.

She wants a quiet life after Special Forces—just a steadysecurity job at a half-finished Manhattan skyscraper.

But then a sister tower implodes in a way physics can’texplain.Witnesses report creatures in the smoke.And something hunts her in the tunnels beneath.

Red wants answers. What she gets instead is an elf with asword, a troll with a wry sense of humor, and a dwarf who believes every battlerequires an audience. They insist an ancient enemy has crossed into ourworld—and Red becomes an accidental gatekeeper simply because she’s standing onthe fault line when it cracks open.

As a hidden war erupts in the shadows of New York City, Redmust decide: run from the past that nearly destroyed her… or fight for a worldshe’s only just beginning to believe in.

A veteran withnothing left to lose.A threat born of magic and shadow.A team she never saw coming.

The Guardian of the Palace launches theaction-packed Guardian League series—perfect for fans of urbanfantasy, modern-world magic, found family, and heroines who refuse to backdown.

 

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Prologue

Corpses patterned the ground as far as my eye could see, apatchwork quilt of death.

I stood atop a skeletal tower, overlooking the broken ruinsof an ancient civilization, so very far from home. I envisioned the beauty thatthe soaring arches once held, the bridges between the constructs reaching outwith broken arms, buildings leaning against one another like ancient lovers ina final embrace. Crumbled remains powdered the bases of former statues, and,everywhere, all of it was littered with the dead.

Like a phoenix, I stood, bathed in fire. An Angel of Death.Not the Angel of Death—he was an ass.

A part of me wanted to go down and see for myself. Maybejust to make sure… to make sure I had done my job… and killed everyone thatused to inhabit that world. The magic I was wielding should have destroyed themall—something inside of me could feel that it had—but I wantedto see it.

Yet I knew that was unrealistic. I didn’t have the time.There were other worlds that needed my infection, and Earth was on myshortlist.

  

Chapter 1

Red – Day 20, Sunday, the day after the attack

“Ms. Hernandez?” a muffled voice called from adistance, accompanied by a gentle rapping on a door. My consciousnessregistered the interruption as a nuisance and pulled me back under.

What seemed like seconds later, the rapping came again, moreinsistent. “Ms. Hernandez.”

Ms. Hernandez was my mom… why were they bothering me?

Then a scraping sound, and an alarmed voice. “Ms.Hernandez! Are you okay?”

Some scrambling, some grunts, more scraping… shit, I wasgoing to have to wake up. Why couldn’t they just let me sleep?

I tried to answer, but my throat was dry and nothing cameout. Coughing, I attempted to sit up, not wholly returned from my trip todreamland. “I’m here. I’m okay.” Was I though? I wasn’t sure.

I was in my flat. Not the desert. My door was partway open,and a slightly overweight man had paused in the act of pushing his way in. Irecognized him, but his name escaped me. Swinging my legs off my cot, I did aquick modesty check. I was fully dressed, though rather tragically, in somesemblance of civilian fatigues—muddied, disheveled, and a little bloody.

The reason came screaming back to me. There had beencreatures, unearthly monsters, in The Palace. They’d done things Icould not explain by any of the rules I knew. And they’d beaten the hell out ofme and then patched me back up in a matter of seconds. I’d blown the head cleanoff of one of them and fled the scene.

Not my smartest move.

Continue TheGuardian League Series!

Earth, through its technological advances, supports nearlyeight billion souls; from a cosmic perspective, that makes it ripe for thepicking. ‘Red’ Hernandez, trying to put a questionable military life behindher, finds herself caught in the middle of stopping an apocalyptic invasion ofEarth. But to do that, she has to figure out who the good guys are, and how shecan combat forces in which she does not believe.