Hi everyone. Today I am featuring A.R. Stern's new released book "Scion of a Swan." Dive into a sneak peek and book details below and find out how to purchase your copy today. Happy reading everyone.
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Driven by vengeance and the mystery of her bloodline, a morally gray woman wielding powerful magick becomes the newest target of the feared Shadow People.
Scion of a Swan
Age of Shadows Book 1
by: A.R. Stern
Genre: Dark Urban Fantasy
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Once I believed there was a balance in the world. Balance of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. I believed there was fairness in karma, that there was a method to the madness and chaos in this world.
But I was wrong.
Her death changed everything. My world lost its core, the sun could no longer push through the thickening gray, and everything I knew to be true shattered like my heart of glass.
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When she first fell ill, it was difficult, but manageable. She was still home, yet bedridden. We’d make her fresh soup and ice her head and soothe her to sleep. Eventually she stopped eating and lost too much weight that we were concerned her body would shut down from lack of nutrition alone. Some days she could sleep the moment her eyes closed and other times she’d lay awake in pain for days, whimpering and hissing from an unknown ache.
Finally, Dad and I made the tough call to hospitalize her so she had attentive care full time. We knew we would be tight for money, and deep down we knew the Delacroix demise was imminent, but we thought this wasn’t it. This was a fluke. She’d get better. This wasn’t it.
And a few rare days she would get better. She’d put on a few pounds and her aches and pains would lessen. Our hopes would rise and Mom would talk about coming home and baking dandelion cookies together and all the laughs and smiles we’d share.
Then the next day she’d be walking the line of death. She couldn’t keep food down. A fever would spike and force her into a state of delusional consciousness.
But the final few weeks before her death were the worst. As the days progressed, she stopped seeing her daughter and husband and instead saw strangers. She didn’t know who I was. She would pretend sometimes, but I could tell from the vacant glint in her eyes Mom wasn’t there.
And it got worse. When her delusions turned to severe psychosis, she became unhinged. No one was safe. She would try to attack me and swipe the IV needle from her arm to stab into my throat, screaming that she wouldn’t let me hurt her again. When she wasn’t attacking Dad or me, she was hurting herself. Mom would cry that her skin was burning and shred her nails against her flesh until I’d scream for a nurse to help subdue her.
The nurses became accustomed to Mom’s psychotic antics. They’d warn me not to fret when her arms were tied to the bed or why new gashes lined her cheeks and throat. Not to worry about the thick layers of gauze on her arms and hands.
And then, the day after my birthday, early Halloween morning, Mom died alone.
Klowbi bumps my shoulder and gestures to the thinning crowd. The ceremony was over. She points to a group and I realize it’s our friends. Brother and sister duo, Alko and Xuan, stand wearing oversized coats and grim expressions. Niko stands beside them wearing a forest green shirt rolled up at the sleeves and an easy grin uncharacteristic for a funeral, but typical for him.
“I’ll meet up with you.” I tell her. Klowbi nods and squeezes my hand before heading in their direction.
I focus my gaze on the coffin resting six feet below. My heartbeats sharpen and my breaths come in waves, my magick whispering just beneath the surface.
“I vow upon my Mother, Fay Delacroix’s grave, the truth I will forever seek. Ancient magick I wield in stride to avenge the witches’ reaped. By Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Soul I will pay the toll of the entombed. So mote it be.”
A surge of power rushes through me, making my blood sing. My head begins to buzz with the delicious taste of magick coating my tongue. When I exhale, sharp tendrils of red barbed with orange dance on the wind before absorbing back into the world.
Orange for dominance and attracting things that cannot be seen. Scarlet red for warning and anger; a color with two ends.
Once I believed there was balance in the world.
I no longer find truth in this.
My new truth is this: I will be the world’s reckoning.
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My breath hitches and all at once my lungs forget how to breathe and the tightness in my chest barrels into me. The invisible hands are choking and my skin goes cold. There’s tingling in my fingers, the ice drip of warning down my spine. I’m staring at a Shadow darker than the sky above. A black so complete it swallows light; transforms into oblivion.
Run.
“Daire?” Klowbi whispers and glances behind.
“Daire,” Xuan is sitting up, her voice dragging me back to reality, “what do you see?”
I blink and point in the direction of the Shadow. “There.”
But it’s gone.
“There’s nothing there,” Xuan says slowly and exchanges a look with Alko who has gone pale.
“It was there,” I mutter, staring at the empty space. Xuan could see Shadows too. Especially with her gifted connection to the Otherworld, she was familiar with the realm more than most. How did she not see it?
“What was there?” Xuan asks.
“I don’t like this,” Alko whispers. He is pulling at his hair and I see a few strands fall to the grass.
I stare at Xuan and shake my head. “I thought I saw-”
“Holy shit,” Klowbi squeaks, wide eyed.
I follow her gaze and see the Shadow standing mere feet away at the forest’s edge. It has no discernible features. Even without eyes, I sense it watching us, marking us.
“How can I see it,” Klowbi whispers and her hand finds mine, squeezing it desperately. “I’ve never been able to see them before.”
Alko shifts so his back is to our group. “I don’t like this. We should leave.”
“That’s fucking terrifying,” Niko’s voice is loud, startling.
Two more Shadows are standing amongst the treeline and it feels as if they are staring at our group. I blink; two more pop up along the forest, then four, five, seven. The soft, peaceful murmur amongst the grounds turns into a thick and heavy silence. The Shadows are dotted between the groups of witches, unmoving, staring with no eyes, an oily black stain.
Within seconds, there are dozens of Shadows standing in the festival grounds. The beautiful aurora of colors from the magick has ceased, the only light is the bonfire and the dying torchlight, yet it doesn’t reach the Shadows. A dark void unafraid of the light.
I’ve never witnessed so many Shadows at once, even at a Wiccan festival, even as a witch.
Without warning, the Shadows lurch forward, charging at whomever is nearest to them. A cluster of Shadows rush towards a group of witches. They scream and scatter, and as if breaking the trance, screams fill the air along with the heady scent of fear. Shadows take chase as the witches scramble towards the light. Tiki torches are being knocked over, yet as the Shadows pass, the fire goes out without an ember still to flicker. People are running around, knocking into each other, the Shadows following in close pursuit. Somehow, though this shouldn’t be possible, I watch as a Shadow manipulates a torch it passes so it falls and trips a young girl, her face scraping the dirt as she falls.
The fear tastes like blood in my mouth.
My eyes dart to the Shadow still watching us, standing at the edge of the forest. It takes a step forward, slowly, as if it’s basking in our fear. I push myself to my feet and grip the hematite stone in my fist, channeling my magick and staring directly into the Shadow. Everything inside is telling me to run, but I hold fast, even as my hand shakes. Beside me, I sense the others stand around me, our backs to each other.
“Negativity that invades this sacred place; I banish you away and back to rest; Beings spent for evil and bane; I cast you now whence you came; Far away I send you this hour; The attempt to harm go no further.”
The Shadow wavers and a shimmering, purple wall erupts between my group and the Shadows eyeing us. They stop and pace, watching the wall, but don’t attempt to touch the energy keeping them at bay. The few standing near us turn to stare and I swear I hear a hiss through the discordance of screams. Around us is the beginning of protection chants being spoken, along with more walls of purple sprouting from the Earth. In my peripheral, there are people on the ground surrounded by those who stand, holding out talismans and stones for protection. The chanting grows louder until the strange hissing sound is something I must have imagined, the chorus of voices combining into one solid tone, one being.
One warning.
***
The feeling of flight in the astral realm is unparalleled to the physical world. It is smoother than bird’s flight, but harder to control. It’s easy to get lost in the worlds, the creatures, the bizarre sensations and eccentric, wild energy that is the astral realm. Only the brave and open-minded can explore the hidden realm beyond reality. Logic-reliant individuals find it nightmarish, while those who appreciate the nameless revel in paradise.
Daire careens expertly though the basic, or ground level, of the astral realm. She sees the house where she and her father lay in bed, the dirt roads snaking through the hills to the cabin, the forests and, as she ascends, the neighboring towns sparkling with cars dotting the everlasting darkness. She’s soaring faster, shooting through the atmosphere so the towns look like small bubbles of light rather than life-size towns where people reside. The strange rush takes her nonexistent breath, since she does not need to breathe in the astral realm, as she breaks into space. The moon is bright and speckled with a strange blue hue. The stars are magnificent as they shimmer and sputter; the sun is spitting flares of light that curl back into its mass.
She closes her eyes, bracing herself, and with a jolt her feet find purchase. The astral level recognizes her, accustomed to her energy wrapped in its own. She knows she’s projected herself to the second level of the astral realm, one of the easiest levels to manifest and stay present in. This level is where she first began to train and test her abilities. A simple task now to bring herself here, when once it took severe concentration.
Daire smiles and opens her eyes. The relief of returning to boundless existence is indescribable. A home away from home.
Daire is familiar with countless levels and can pinpoint which level she is on by focusing her energy on the astral’s. At first it would deceive her, dodging, shifting, and flaking its energy so she couldn’t map exactly what level she had found herself on. After years of practice, and patience, it finally accepted her and now she could name the level she was on just by sending her energy out, by tasting the air that isn’t air or sensing the astral wildlife that resided on the plane with her. Seldom did she ascend beyond what she considered the tenth level, fearing the dangers and the potential for getting irretrievably lost. She preferred the mid-range levels, as they became more unpredictable and the astral wildlife was often more curious, rather than the lower levels which felt too comfortable, or the higher levels where the challenge became more of a balance of permanence and temperance.
As far as she knew, there were millions, billions, trillions, infinite levels. For what point would there be of having a limit in a limitless world? An end where there was never a beginning?
Massive columns of rock jut from the ground, spiraling so high the tops cannot be seen. They are cocooned in vegetation at the base with a strange yellow hue to it and it climbs up the colossal pillars, growing sparser the further up it crawls. Trees the size of skyscrapers reach only a third of the way up the rock formations, seemingly dwarf-size in comparison. The pillars themselves are squared, each one with four jagged sides with the texture of bark and the density of bedrock.
Blues and grays color the sky, the same strange yellow hue coloring over. There is no apparent sun, or stars, or unnatural astrological phenomena. There are no clouds, but a gold mist hangs in the air, leaving golden droplets on the looming trees and dampening the pillars. The ground gives beneath her feet; the grass covered in golden dew, the dirt the color of bronze.
Daire brushes her fingertips on a bare patch of pillar and looks down to see her fingers covered in the thick, golden dew. She turns in a circle, but everywhere looks the same, with towering cliffs, spiraling vines and trees, and aurelian dew coating the surfaces. After many years in the astral realm, she observed its tendency to recreate Earth with peculiar twists. Even knowing it isn’t Earth, it allows a sense of familiarity and comfort without distorting the wonderment of the level. But the higher the level, the more bizarre and unpredictable the level becomes. The world can appear gray or an abstract reflection where water floats, air drowns, and the ground breathes. The energy level remains constant in the astral realm, but each visit to a level could yield a unique environment.
Picking a direction at random, Daire begins to walk. Although the astral realm lacks physicality, it still exhibits reactions. She can feel the dense dirt compact beneath each step or the light wind that whistles through the columns carrying a perfume of sugar and rot. The flowers can be plucked from the ground and water can still make things wet. Despite not requiring oxygen, Daire habitually breathes and could potentially drown if submerged in water, unless she remembers that physics doesn’t apply. The astral realm is a mind game, a carnival of tricks.
It takes only to forget for a paradise to become a nightmare.
BLURB:
Shadows thirst for the living. She starves for the truth.
Descending from a long line of witches, Daire Delacroix has been practicing magick since she was a witchling, and with the gift to see all magick, her gifts are unparalleled. But when Daire’s mother suddenly falls ill only to perish without a valid diagnosis, Daire grows vengeful and bitter for answers.
Half a year after her death, Daire reintroduces herself into the witch community to celebrate her first Wiccan holiday without her mother. When the Shadow People make an appearance and attack at one of the most renowned Wiccan sabbats, Daire's world starts to fall apart once again.
Now with the Shadows growing violent and haunting Daire, she is determined to destroy them and protect what remains of her family. The deeper she searches the more secrets come to the surface, along with the truth about her mother’s death and her lineage.
Nothing will stop her from unveiling the truth—even when it means walking the line of right and wrong.
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A.R. Stern
A. R. Stern is an indie author from Minnesota, blending dark fantasy, horror, and new adult elements in her writing. Her current series, Age of Shadows, showcases her unique style and she plans to explore different genres in upcoming novels.
Stern is an emerging author who began writing in elementary school. With several novels in her past, she now focuses on developing new ideas and refining her craft, eager to share her unique stories with readers.
In her spare time she is an avid reader of all genres, cruises on a Harley with her husband, and spends time with her pets. She also takes pleasure in cooking and the art of sourdough baking.
Follow A.R. Stern at the Following Links:
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I really like the cover art. Looks fantastic. Sounds like a good read.
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