Emilia is excited to start a house-sitting job, even if the house is creepy and more than a little on the odd side — as odd as the owner’s requests. When she finds an unusual gaming console, she is drawn into a lusty video game in which she crosses paths with five inhuman creatures. She is drawn to them all, but when the five men keep telling her that the game is very much not what it seems, Emilia realizes she can no longer play along.
As the path she follows offers not just desire and intense experiences but also sadness, cruelty, and hurt around every bend, Emilia’s resolve firms: she will free the five men, who tell her they are already a family, already lovers. Whatever she has grown to feel for them, she cannot let them suffer if saving them is within her power.
With the rules of a game she doesn’t understand forcing her to play along, Emilia must find a way to get to the end of the game and get everyone out — whatever the cost. The freedom of her five monsters depends on her.
Emilia, as if enthralled, took another step toward him. The gravel shifted under her silly boots, and the man looked at her. His eyes were vibrant copper, and they widened as he saw her. The melody stopped, and his mouth fell away from the mouthpiece of his flute.
“Traveler?” he said, the word somewhere between surprise and disbelief.
Emilia licked her lips. “You play beautifully.”
After a moment of silence, he closed his mouth and smiled a contagious smile at her. “Thank you. It’s nice to have someone listen to it. It feels like no one has, other than those glowworms, for the past century or so.”
“Right. Because this is Rook’s prison, and you are a prisoner.”
He tilted his head. “You met Arden, clearly.”
She cleared her throat. “He stole my underpants.”
It took several long heartbeats before the flute player broke out in giggles. “He’s been known to do that, but as far as I have experienced, only after he has seen to your needs.”
As far as he has experienced? “That’s one way of putting it.” A noise caught Emilia’s attention, and she turned. The greenery that made the bower was shifting behind her back, closing off the entrance to the flower-hung space. “Uhm.” She looked back to the flute player. “Let me guess. I’m stuck here. And the only way to get out is… playing your flute?”
“Mmh. That’s not the first time someone suggested that exact thing, you see. But yes, metaphorically speaking.” He put the actual instrument into a case that he kept behind the cushion. “My name is Pheus, in case you need to scream something, later on.”
Emilia snorted, but the noise died on her lips when Pheus stood. Oh, he was pretty, but also tall, lean, his hair reaching easily to the middle of his thighs. He wore something like a Japanese style bathrobe, though this was no cheap fabric. It made him look as if he were a Faerie prince, and Emilia found herself drawn to him, just as much as the hunter and his hounds at her back had made her want to run.
Alexa Piper writes steamy romance that ranges from light to dark, from straight to queer. She’s also a coffee addict. Alexa loves writing stories that make her readers laugh and fall in love with the characters in them.
his debut novel from S.D. Huston is a partial fairytale retelling of Snow White & Rose Red mashed up with Irish mythologies!
Triplet sisters, one dead, one kidnapped. A vengeful leprechaun and a scheming goddess. Can Lily save her last sister?
When sixteen-year-old sisters Lily and Rose take it upon themselves to aid a tiny man with a long beard in distress, he curses them into a world of trouble. Lily contends with the grief that lies behind her while trapped in a suffocating silent world of her own design, and she must now face the threat of what might lie ahead.
Whether she believes it or not, leprechauns are real, and in Lugh she has made an unfortunate enemy. Now the race is on to save Rose from the deranged whims of an unscrupulous faery and find out what, or who, is behind this mysterious turn of events. To find the answers, Lily must face the darkness that plagues her: both inside and out. On the grand stage of this world and the Otherworld, an adventure bursts forth so chaotic perhaps even Lily can’t silence it.
Weaving lore, light, and the lush beauty of the Irish language into the wintery landscape of a mystical Ireland around its 3rd century, Blood of the Lily brings to life a world where even the most fantastical places and creatures can be corrupted by the realities of life. This first book in the Clash of Goddesses series transports you into the enchanting and masterfully crafted Otherworld of Éire as one may only see in dreams. Start your journey today!
“I want my sister.” Lily held up the harp, ready to play, but Fintan put a hand on her arm.
“You can’t banish me this time, Lugh,” he said. “You must come back home. Your sister is worried about you. Ébliu will not stop pestering me.”
“You stupid oaf! Why get married?” Lugh tugged his gray beard. “My sister won’t leave you alone? Fine. We’ll fix that.” With a wiggle of his beard, he sent Fintan crashing past the entrance to tumble further back into the cave.
The sound of a grumbled roar sent chills through Lily. What monster hid back there?
“No pestering from Ébliu anymore.” Lugh laughed and yelled his words at the back of the cave. “Just watch out for the dragon!”
Suddenly, the bear roared forward, thinking to take advantage of the little man’s distraction. Lugh swung around and fluttered his fingers, his beard turning golden in a bright light. Cúig stopped in mid-leap. His paws ran in the air but made no progress.
“And you, my friend, wouldn’t be in your predicament if you hadn’t looked for my gold. For that,” Lugh wagged a finger back and forth, “you can go look at all the gold you want but no touching or the dragon will get you.”
Cúig flew back into the cave’s darkness, disappearing the same way Fintan had been dismissed.
Lily shook, her teeth ground so tightly together that she lost feeling in her jaw. She strummed the first chord of the sleeping song.
The leprechaun held up a hand. “Come Daur da Bláo, apple-sweet murmurer, come, Coir Cethair Chuir, four-angled frame of harmony, come summer, come winter, out of the mouths of harps and bags and pipes!”
The harp flew from her hands to his, ripped right out of her grasp. Only a second passed before she pulled out her spear, ready to hurtle the iron tip through him, but then she was blinded by a bright light. She blinked several times to clear away the spots in her eyes.
When she could see again, she was back home.
Right outside the wooden palisade of Ráth Bláthanna. Now, how would she save her sister with the Samhain portals closed?
S.D. Huston grew up in several places across the United States, but now lives in Florida’s panhandle with her husband, her youngest son who is autistic, four cats, and one special Siberian Husky. Her oldest son is off serving the country in the U.S. Army.
She’s always had a love for the written word, asking for her first typewriter when she was nine years old (yes, a typewriter!). However, her multiple career paths meandered through seven years in the military, then working in administration, before completing her masters in Writing. She spent the next seven years teaching college English and Literature while also running her own business as a Writing Coach, helping students and writers all over the world.
Today she concentrates solely on her writing career and her family: human, furry, and faery!
Title: The Dark Queen Author: M. Dalto Genre: New Adult Fantasy
For fans of Elise Kova, Sarah J. Maas, and Holly Black.
For centuries, the Empire has been enslaved to an infallible, revered Prophecy—one that controlled every thought and action, banished those who questioned its integrity, and promised to bring peace and tranquility to those who followed blindly and believed unconditionally.
But the Prophecy is flawed.
Amid broken promises and mournful lamentations, fates are changed, and dreams are destroyed.
When an ancient force resurfaces and threatens to destroy all they know, new alliances are formed as the heirs to the Empire’s throne struggle to put aside personal differences for the good of their realm.
It wasn’t like when she had been outside for too long without an overcoat or a cape. Or as if she were caught out in the rain without an umbrella and the chill of the evening air had penetrated through her clothes until it reached her bones.
No, it was the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night after a nightmare, body slick with sweat and heart racing.
This was the chill of fear.
Wherever she was, it was dark. She sensed the cool smoothness of stone around her, yet when she cast her arms out she couldn’t feel any walls. From the smell of damp rock, however, she knew they were there.
And they were cold.
It was paralyzing. Instead of running, or trying to find a way out, she wrapped her arms around herself as if to retain whatever last bit of inner warmth she possessed. Huddled within those biting, stone confines, she tried to keep her teeth from chattering and her body from seizing.
Where was she? And how did she get there in the first place?
She had just watched the others pack and head off on their trek to the Borderlands. She and Jamison had stayed behind, and as they were returning to the palace…
Crystal.
She had approached them with no limp, no hobble, no sign of any outward injuries. In fact, the way she had snuck up on Alex in the palace gardens, catching her completely unaware, it was as though she hadn’t been in the infirmary just moments before, allegedly healing from wounds inflicted upon her by Lexan.
She remembered seeing Jamison in the distance, sprawled on the ground, immobile. And that man…
She had never met him before, but those eyes—they bore into her soul as if she should have recognized him.
A sob choked in her throat as her head throbbed with pain.
Mom!
Despite the ache, Alex’s head whipped upward, and she stared desperately into the gloom. Sarayna? What was she doing there?
She tried to gather her legs beneath her, but they felt like lead. The pounding in her head—it was getting worse. Alex had to warn her daughter and maybe Sarayna could at least escape whatever this was, could tell Reylor and Treyan…
“Alexstrayna.”
Her name echoed off the stones as if someone were there with her, watching her all along.
“Who’s there?” she rasped; her throat was raw as if she had been screaming. Had she? She couldn’t remember anything since her path crossed Crystal’s in the gardens.
A smooth, feminine chuckle resounded around her. “Oh, we are going to have a fine time together, you and I.”
“Who are you?” Alex demanded, her voice growing louder. She finally regained her footing and pushed herself up into a standing position.
The pain within Alex’s skull was almost unbearable, but her eyes began to adjust slowly, taking in what was, indeed, a room. The moss-covered walls confirmed the smell of dampness and the sound of trickling water could be heard. There was a brightening light above, shining through the darkness from a window. It was as if the suns were rising on a new day—like a dawning ray of hope that she was going to escape this hell. Wherever it was.
Although every muscle in her body was tense, as if the frigid air was eating away at her from the inside out, she started toward the light.
And that voice remained all around her.
Laughing.
“Until we meet again, Empress,” it said, just as that light exploded within the room.
For a moment, illuminated by the flash, Alex swore she saw a throne—a black marble chaise carved into the wall. Upon that throne was a female clad in black.
A woman wearing her face.
Before she could take a step closer to investigate, that light exploded not only in that dark room, but also inside her head. The brightness intermingled with the pain that had been building between her eyes, bursting like a million pins and needles through every pore of her body. Everything went dark as Alex screamed.
M. Dalto is a bestselling New Adult author of adventurous romantic fantasy stories, having won a Watty award for excellence in digital storytelling for her debut novel, Two Thousand Years, in 2016. She spends her days as a full-time residential real estate paralegal, using her evenings to pursue her literary agenda, and when she’s not writing, she enjoys reading fantasy novels, playing video games, and drinking coffee. She currently lives in Massachusetts with her husband, their daughter, and their corgi named Loki.
