Happy Tuesday (evening!) and welcome back to a new Dalriada Valley teaser. I’ve been hard at work getting the book closer to publication later this month. And I couldn’t do any of it without my fantastical allies, the Qamber sisters 😉 Currently, Nada has been creating a gorgeous interior design, though I’ve been a bit torn between which look I prefer best. Any thoughts?
On that note, let’s dive in to today’s teaser scene! If you plan to read any of the Borderlands novels, I’d highly recommend skipping this post. Either way, I hope you enjoy your sneak peek into Dalriada Valley!
Today’s episode was brought to you by Inigo Montoya
*major spoilers for silver hollow & blackbriar cove below*
Dalriada Valley
Borderlands #3 Teaser
Jo couldn’t breathe. For hours, Faye raged throughout their once pristine home, and Jo maintained the weaving.
Amie lay comatose on Jo’s bed. The Seelie girl hadn’t awoken since Jo wrested back control.
Anything is better than the way she screamed.
Faye had done nothing to help once the phone call from Star and Cian came through.
“We will follow every lead until we learn the truth,” their father had promised.
It confirmed what the twins had feared since receiving the news from Star earlier that evening.
Drustan had been murdered, and Melody was nothing more than collateral damage.
Had Jo not the foresight to shield the walls, the power behind Faye’s fury would have already leveled their home.
Faye cursed in the old tongue, in the language of the spirits and the stars. Ripples of power expanded and contracted as she destroyed their living room with its illusions of humanity.
It wasn’t as though Jo had forgotten who and what they were. But life as a human had been easier in so many ways. Faye never quite let her forget, and the life their parents presented for Amie’s sake had been false. But there had been moments when Jo could close her eyes and almost believe.
Faye had at least the presence of mind to pretend a while longer until Jo could put Amie under. The spell wouldn’t last much longer, because Faye was barely under control, and Jo was weakening.
Jo wiped the sweat off her face and cursed her human glamour for the first time in decades. Of all the times for their parents to disappear, today was arguably the worst.
“Let me take over the weaving.” Faye appeared suddenly.
Jo realized she had begun drifting between human vision and the weaving. “I can hold it,” she insisted, wincing at the noticeable rasp in her voice.
Faye cursed as she crouched before Jo, her sharp features a dangerous, tear-stained violet instead of the light brown she’d long ago adopted. “You’re barely holding on. Let me try again.”
Jo slapped her twin’s hand away before she could attempt, and fail, to join in the weaving. “You’re too out of practice. Try to ward the house again, before anyone not human notices.”
Faye huffed and mumbled under her breath, but also did not argue before leaving the room to obey. Yet another sign something else was deeply wrong with Jo’s twin.
Jo had looked to Melody Wentworth as a surrogate mother. But Faye had always been closer to Drustan, who had taught her how to become a knight. Yet something about the way Faye mourned struck Jo as odd.
Don’t think about it. Focus on the weaving.
Jo released the shield around their house as she felt Faye’s magic rise to take over. She poured what remaining strength she had left into keeping their charge asleep.
The moment Drustan and Melody had died, Amie had screamed. Her green eyes and pale skin had suddenly glowed, as though illuminated by a thousand volts of electricity. A strange language had poured from her mouth, and it had been everything the twins could do to push her under. They had no explanation, and only a vain hope Drustan would come home to rectify the problem soon. Until Star called with the news, and their hopes crashed to dust.
“We need to bring her to Nanny to undo the binding,” Jo had insisted.
Faye had paused in her path of destruction long enough to say, “Dru put us in charge of Amie. We are going to follow his wishes.”
Jo didn’t dare to ask how Faye knew Drustan’s secret wishes, not now.
“It doesn’t do well to dwell,” Nanny once said.
What would Nanny think of them now?
Jo was so weak compared to what she’d once been. She’d fallen into the weaving quite by accident, and just in the nick of time. It had been instinct after decades of neglect. Now it was all she could do to hold on. Still, she weakened by the second.
With Drustan gone, the bindings that had snared Amie’s memory were frayed. The twins weren’t anywhere near Blackbriar Cove, so Nanny could no longer help them. They only had one chance to get this right, before everything literally unraveled before their eyes.
Amie’s skin flickered between her normal human glamour and that luminous, godlike creature they feared.
Jo closed her eyes and pushed deeper into the weaving, on the golden and silver threads keeping their best friend bound. She bit down on her lip as the creature inside Amie pushed right back with a renewed vengeance.
Please…
Jo had maybe an hour left before she lost control, maybe less.
Please help us, she prayed.
Sweat broke over her face as her hands trembled.
I can’t do this alone, she thought at the void pressing around them.
Faye’s shield was working, but it wasn’t perfect. Creators, they were so out of practice. How had they become so lazy in the last decade, so dangerously human? She needed to become more if they were to save Amie.
All sound muffled to oppressive silence the instant Jo felt the void pierce Faye’s shield.
The void did not rush upon them.
No cries of her sister’s alarm reached her ears, and yet the void crept closer.
Something pricked at the back of Jo’s mind, about the present darkness Nanny once warned her about. Or had it been something she’d read in one of Nanny’s books?
Jo glanced over her shoulder at the thickening shadows, and then to Amie’s glowing form as she pushed her fear aside to dare whisper, “Death?”
to be continued…
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