Hello everyone! Hope you’ve been having a fantastic week so far. My week to date has consisted of chasing my toddler around our land and putting together Ninja Turtles floor puzzles. If I have been remiss in my social media duties, it’s largely due to my little man and my extra job. And somewhere in the middle of everything, usually very late in the evening, I sit down to blissful silence and write.
Today I wanted to share some more Bound Beauty progress with all my Wylder Tales fans. I am such a “pantser” that I typically dive straight into a story sans outline. Occasionally I break form and begin with one. In the case of this novel, I have started the story from three different points in the narrative timeline and three different perspectives. Writing the third book in a trilogy comes with all sorts of lovely pressures, largely self-imposed since none of you are heckling me…yet. But I finally, after multiple “pantsing” sessions, made a detailed and comprehensive outline of the first six chapters of Bound. Woohoo! And naturally, inspiration hit immediately.
This Tuesday Teaser is from the new prologue, from a character we haven’t met yet in the Wylderlands, but will impact our characters in enormous ways. (Also, gives me an excuse to reveal what’s been happening in the castle since Vynasha was away ;p
Bound Beauty Volume 3 Teaser #2
She often dreamed of glittering gems beneath a canopy of starlight and soft silks against satin skin. A perfect wolf moon gleamed in the glass skylight above so silvery beams blended together with the hazy glow of a dozen candelabrum. Joy filled her every step as they danced together, her hand in his, smile lines about his perfect pale eyes. He was like the moonlight and she filled with all the warmth of the sun. His words blurred together in her memory, full of promise and hope until her light died. It was the last moment of her life she could remember and though she could not explain how she knew this, the moment her dreams died.
All dreams die in the damp dim of the dungeon of Castle Bitterhelm.
She woke to the echoing roars of her brothers and sisters, kin who were trapped half an age and more, then snarled at the lingering memories. Dreams and memories, like jagged pieces of broken glass stabbed at her mind now and then at the worst opportunity. Just as she was enjoying the feeling of air moving through her fur, as she sat back to release her own cry to the moon.
In the endless black of their prison, she had forgotten much more than the name of the castle. Now it came to her as her last moments as a woman came to her mind, stalling her lumbering movements. She froze, the cry escaping as a bitter whine and she twisted her great head to the courtyard behind her. Bushes covered in blood-red blossoms surrounded her and inside the castle, her brothers and sisters waged war against the master.
And our minds, the thought came softly from the deep places of her mind.
Darkness and pain had been her sole companions for so long, alongside the occasional cries of the others, until she came.
Curse-breaker, she tried to speak her name. The One had come to them at last.
Too late!
They were too far-gone, she wanted to tell the girl. A deeper part of her, the beast who had slumbered half an age, wanted to rip into their long awaited savior. She wasn’t sure why she both loathed and longed to touch the Curse-breaker. Twin glowing eyes, like a wyldcat’s, blazed through the bars of her cell, piercing through the dark and stirring something long forgotten. Immediately, she rose and stumbled as her chains were broken. The girl smiled at her with sharp teeth and then left the door open behind her.
Come and be free, the Curse-breaker said to their minds as she opened their cell doors, breaking both their physical chains and the majik blocking their free will. The eldest among them had one conscious thought that quickly spread through to the others.
Kill the masters!
Too long they had waited to be freed and now they wanted vengeance. Too late to call them back, now they would seek and find their pound of flesh.
to be continued…
stay tuned for more Tuesday Teasers & Wylder Tales
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Jennifer Silverwood 