Once there was a girl who spoke to shadows...
Rune's mother is uncaring and her brother is too young to protect her, so when Rune's father sells her to the depraved city of Wraith at the young age of ten, no one stops him. His last words to her are of a debt he cannot pay. The shadows who’ve kept Rune company as long as she can remember seem to know what he speaks of and yet they keep their silence.
And so Rune grows up living in servitude to Wraith’s brothel and its manipulative mistress, Agata, all while having only the faintest recollections of her forgotten childhood. Years later when she finally escapes Wraith, a wild place wrapped up in hedonism and old world ritual, she vows to never return...
When a child prince is kidnapped by a masked killer in a neighboring kingdom, however, Rune no longer has a choice. Joined by Weylin, her old love and a fellow Wraith runaway, she returns to the accursed city and the shadows of her past.
Not all is as it seems as threads of memory begin to unravel, revealing old lies and dark secrets.
The debt of her past may be too high to pay.
The shadows are speaking.
Death is waiting.
EXCERPT
There is a moaning sound
and the creaking of limbs as the trees settle around us again. From the corner
of my eye, I see the cloaked figure toss back his hood and remove his gloves;
the shadows gather, mimicking his actions as they pull their threads from the
circle’s branches. Two hold up hands curled into fists. One begins to sob
before fading away.
Rune.
“Child.”
I turn at the man’s voice,
seeing that I am being beckoned to come further into the circle’s middle. A sad
smile crinkles his split lips as I obey.
He takes a deep breath,
then begins to speak—“Once there was a child who spoke to shadows … ”
A pale face with red lips
appears in the fog as he speaks, pressing a finger with a long ragged nail to
its lips when I open my mouth to scream.
Raven is a freelance editor by night and fangirl at every other available opportunity.
She always knew books were her passion, well after her grandmother’s challenge to read a book a day, and obtained her B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Arcadia University.
Over the past four years, she has worked with a range of authors, both self-published and traditionally published, on short stories and novels from horror to contemporary in YA and Adult fiction.
Currently, she’s drowning in her TBR list, drafting her second WIP, brainstorming a new project, and expanding her freelancing business—all while looking for more bookish things to get involved with.
Her debut novel, Shadowspeak, will be published by Fox Pointe Publishing, LLP, in February 2021.
She is active on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook when she remembers.
Social Media Links:
Website - https://anewlookonbooks.com/
Instagram - https://instagram.com/anewlookonbooks
Twitter - https://twitter.com/anewlookonbooks
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/rceckman
Publisher Page - https://www.foxpointepublishing.com/author-raven-eckman
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