The Curse of the Arcadian Stone: Vol. 1 Stolen Oath (Nameless Fay)
Page 9
In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would ever get to see even a glimpse of the power of the legendary relic.
I was also immensely relieved, not to mention pleasantly surprised, that somehow the energy of the relic responded to me in spite of its inert state.
Maybe it was even a sign of better things to come.
An indication that perhaps there was hope yet of my return as the guardian to the Mystic Lake.
That all was not lost.
Josh met my gaze, his forehead creasing in worry. “You need to rest.” He brushed my hair back from my face. “Sleep.”
And I was out like a light.
***
To be continued…in Volume 2.
What unimaginable power does the relic really contain? Will it return Josh to Earth? Will Magenta be able to go back to her Forest?
Follow Josh and Magenta on this epic quest with Volume 2: Broken Fate. Click here to read it now!
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S. R. BREAKER (Sara Bellcamp) lives in New Zealand with her husband and two kids. She writes offbeat, quirky, easy reading teen/young adult science fiction and fantasy books.
Suburban mum by day and author by night, she loves to live vicariously through her characters. They don't have to vacuum all day long and are almost always guaranteed to survive any fantastical or thrilling incidents, no matter how treacherous she writes them.
She likes binge-watching TV shows and reading books that take her to far enough unknown worlds—but then still have enough time to wash the dishes after.
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Read on for a sneak peek of S. R. Breaker’s Epic Fantasy Romance novella series The Secret of the Phoenix (The Completed Phoenix Series)
Sneak Peek: The Secret of the Phoenix
“Always a dull moment” high school student Sarah Peters gets magically sent to another world. And now the bad guys with the big, scary robots want her dead. Enter tall, hot, and brooding Prince.
***
He grabbed my arm. “How do you know about the phoenix?”
“Ow,” I said pointedly, loudly, and he dropped his hand. I gave him a fake gracious look. “Well, your stupid ‘phoenix’,” I relayed, motioning quotation marks with my fingers in mocking, “appeared in my bedroom, and the next thing I knew, I was here. You do the math.”
“The stupid phoenix,” he echoed, sounding offended, “is the insignia of my country.”
“What country? Thailand?”
“Centeria.”
“What?” I knew I sucked at geography but I was pretty sure I’d never heard of such a grandiose-sounding name for a country. “Where in the hell is that?”
“You have to come with me,” he said, pulling me along behind him.
“Ow—stop grabbing me.” I shrugged him off, exasperated. “Now, I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers here,” I declared.
He had started to groan when he paused, his gaze halfway to the sky. “I have a feeling you’ll be changing your mind.”
I shot him a wry look. “Yeah, sure.”
Then I heard what sounded like an explosion from behind me and looked over in time to see a huge black and indigo robot crash through two building structures. The ground shook and I held on to the wall. “What the—?” My jaw dropped as I recognized the robot from the vision I’d seen this afternoon on the street, just as the thing seemed to look over and point a mechanical arm weapon in our direction—in my direction.
A shot fired and hit the top of the structure above us and debris crashed down. I jumped aside and to the ground. “—the hell?” I asked, gawking up at the thing.
“Change your mind yet?”
No time to answer, I scrambled up and started running down the street again. I looked around, baffled. I’d watched enough television to figure that robots were supposed to fight other robots. But these ones seemed to be chasing us—not anyone or anything else. This has to be the stupidest dream in the entire world!
***
Enjoyed the preview? The Secret of the Phoenix is only available on Amazon.com
Feel like a fun and quirky fantasy adventure across multiple dimensions? Try S. Breaker’s fast-paced easy to read completed YA series Selfless.
"They're after you. But which you...?"
Mistaken for her imperiled, notorious genius alternate self, Laney's accidental trip to a parallel world could very quickly turn very deadly.
Read on for a sneak peek…
Sneak Peek: The Selfless Series
They're after you. But which you...? Mistaken identities. Parallel worlds. Government conspiracies. Out of time. Save the multiverse. Save yourself. Don't get erased. Ready?
***
Friday, 20 March 2020 3:20 a.m.
Oof! Laney tumbled out of the quantum shear onto a riverbank.
Her eyelids felt heavy, there was a dull aching in her head, and gravity seemed to be keeping her cheek pressed against the wet sand on the river shore. She groaned and shivered at the same time.
Then as if on cue, it started to rain.
What the hell just happened? She peeked out of one eye. It was dark, and all she could see was the faint silhouette of a suspension bridge crossing the river.
Her heart started to pound as she regained her bearings.
She had to get up.
What she wouldn’t give just then for an average teenage life, blissfully ignorant of quantum shears, multiverse catastrophes, and personal mortal peril. The life she’d had before today.
Yesterday Laney’s biggest worry had been her sociology paper.
Mrs. Bankes had cut her some slack—understandably, since the entire contents of her dorm room had been ransacked the previous night, her stuff shred to pieces, and her computer hard drive smashed. Vandalism, the school authorities had said. Laney, knowing better, shook her head. Mrs. Bankes had given her an extension until Friday.
Laney shivered again, this time not from the cold but from dread.
Friday. Today.
Laney dragged herself up the riverbank and collapsed against the crumbly, mossy underside of the concrete bridge, gasping as she looked around.
A rusty dinghy was half sunk off the end of a collapsed wooden dock on the shore. The path beyond the end of the bridge where she was led toward a row of low, run-down brick buildings. The buildings looked like apartments, but there was something old-fashioned about their architecture—the iron terraces, the white shuttered windows, the white bricks lining the red walls. Rusty cars had been haphazardly abandoned on the road as well as on the bridge itself. Cars with leather canopy tops, large grills, and round headlights.
Classic cars. Laney thought, puzzled. The place looked like an old movie set, especially with the addition of the rain, except nothing looked even remotely familiar to her. She gingerly climbed over the waist-high stone wall that dammed the river and headed for the top of the bridge to get a better view.
A commotion up the street made her snap to, her heart pounding harder in her chest. She squinted in the faint light but didn’t have to look for long to know it was them. Who else could it have been? They knew someone came through a quantum shear. And they knew it was her.
She swallowed hard. She had to get out of there; the exposed bridge was not the best hiding place. Unfortunately, when she moved to run away, one of their strobe-like torches swept past her and detected her movement.
“There she is!”
Laney took off like a shot, running across the bridge and toward a line of what looked like deci
duous trees, hoping at least for some cover, but more trackers showed up on the other side of the bridge and she was immediately blocked.
One of the trackers stopped short of her position. “Come with us now and save us all some trouble,” he advised, training the business end of a big-ass high-tech gun in her direction.
Laney was still heaving. “Who are you people?” she asked, hoping to appear innocent.
Another tracker closed in from behind and she heard him speak into his communicator earpiece. “We’ve got her, sir. Fifty-five north, minus oh-twenty-two west, on the A306 bridge.”
“Hey, whatever your boss thinks I have, seriously, I don’t have it. I don’t even know what the hell it is!” She swallowed hard as even more trackers closed in. She pivoted left and right, panicked. She was trapped!
The flowing river seemed like the only plausible option for escape. As she prepared to jump, her breathing sounded very loud in her ears, louder than the rain.
Two more trackers closed in.
She glanced at the river again, then back up at the trackers. She didn’t have to be a scientist to know that the deep river was probably freezing.
And for a split second, Laney entertained the thought that their interrogation room, on the other hand, was probably heated to a balmy seventy-five degrees.
But before she could launch herself into the icy waters, a shadow dropped from above the bridge and fell two of the trackers in less than a second.
“What—?” was the only thing the guy with the radio could say before he received a left hook right to his face. A couple more trackers moved in, another two were on the way, but with their attention shifting to the shadow, Laney took the opportunity to slip away.
She darted toward the end of the bridge closest to her and crouched against the underside of one of the old support columns, hoping nobody had seen her duck and hide.
Head down, she heard loud groans, the clatter of weapons hitting concrete, and bodies splashing into the river.
After a few moments, the only sounds that remained were the constant pelting of the rain and the faint sound of the wind blowing through the streets.
Laney squinted in the rain, cautiously peering out to check if it was safe when someone grabbed her from behind and covered her mouth. Her scream was muffled as she struggled to get free before she bit his hand.
He threw her partway across the wet ground. “Cripe, Laney!” he exclaimed, wringing out his hand.
Laney blinked and squinted again, this time recognizing the intense blue eyes. She heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Noah.”
He straightened up his jacket, blew out a breath, then shot her an exasperated, pointed, look. “Well?” he prompted before he took off running.
Frowning, Laney took a deep breath before following suit. She couldn’t blame him for being irate. He did just take on about a dozen tracker thugs to save her.
Let me guess, someone’s after you and you need my help to save the world or something crazy like that?
Actually, someone’s after you.
That had been just yesterday. The first time she’d met Noah.
Well…technically she had met him before.
***
Enjoyed the preview? The Selfless Series is also available to purchase on Amazon.com