White
Heart of Justice
Noon
Onyx
Book
3
Jill
Archer
Genre:
Fantasy
Publisher:
Ace
Date
of Publication: May 27, 2014
ISBN-10:
0425257177
ISBN-13:
978-0425257173
ASIN:
B00EOARZP0
Number
of pages: 304
Word
Count: 95,000
Cover
Artist: Jason Chan
Book
Description:
Since
Lucifer claimed victory at Armageddon, demons, angels, and humans
have coexisted in uneasy harmony. Those with waning magic are trained
to maintain peace and order. But hostilities are never far from
erupting…
After
years of denying her abilities, Noon Onyx, the first woman in history
to wield waning magic, has embraced her power. She’s won the right
to compete in the prestigious Laurel Crown Race—an event that will
not only earn her the respect of her peers but also, if she wins, the
right to control her future.
However,
Noon’s task is nearly impossible: retrieve the White Heart of
Justice, a mythical sword that disappeared hundreds of years ago. The
sword is rumored to be hidden in a dangerous region of Halja that she
is unlikely to return from. But Noon’s life isn’t the only thing
hanging in the balance. The sword holds an awesome power that, in the
wrong hands, could reboot the apocalypse—and Noon is the only one
who can prevent Armageddon from starting again…
Excerpt
Prologue
I
can’t be with you anymore. That’s what she’d said. Six words
that had become sixty then six hundred then six thousand . . . sixty
thousand . . . six million . . . reverberating in his head, bouncing
around inside his brain, driving him absolutely mad. There were no
other words. No other memories. Only that last one of her. Standing
at the edge of the oozy stew of the destroyed keep’s moat, flanked
by two Angels, one preternaturally beautiful, the other full of
purpose. The same purpose he’d had until those six words stripped
him of it.
Flying
out, he’d barely cleared the wreckage of the keep. His heart beat
against the walls of his massive chest, and his monstrous wings beat
against the infinite, empty sky, but the beats were slow and grew
slower still. Slower. Until finally . . .
Stop.
He
made it across the river and then dropped like a ten-ton stone,
crashing into the brush, breaking tree limbs and a wing. He lay there
amongst the blackening scrub refusing to shift back into human form.
Man’s
thoughts were unwelcome.
In
time, the rogares came. Water wraiths. He killed them all. And then
sickened by the smell of blood and meat he couldn’t—wouldn’t—consume,
he left his nesting place. By then, the wing had healed, but
unnaturally, so that flying straight was impossible. For days, he
traveled in circles, never getting far. It wasn’t just the wing.
The yearning to return to her was nearly unbearable. The emptiness
inside of him an abyss.
Was
she still in the Shallows? If he could just . . .
But
then he remembered the Angels. And the look on her face when she’d
said the six words. And the feelings in her signature. She’d need
more than mere weeks for them to abate. She might need months.
Hopefully, not years. Years meant nothing to him, but they did to
her. And then the reminder that her time was more precious than his
drove his yearning to a new level of ferocity. Ruthlessly, he tamped
it down. He realized then that it might be best to return to man’s
thoughts. After all, she was a woman.
And
he wanted her back.
Chapter
1
“Glashia
calls Noon the ballista.” Waldron Seknecus’ low voice rumbled
through the Gridiron, a deep, cavernous underground space used by the
upper years at St. Lucifer’s for sparring. “Because of how she
fights now. Watch.”
He
was speaking to three other spectators: my father, Karanos Onyx,
executive of the Demon Council and the man who would ultimately
employ all of the magic users who trained here at St. Luck’s;
Friedrich Vanderlin, an Archangel who was the dean of Guardians over
at the Joshua School, the Angel academy we shared a campus with; and
a woman who looked unsettlingly familiar to me, though I couldn’t
remember when we’d met or who she was. I cleared my mind and
concentrated on my opponent, Ludovicus Mischmetal, who preferred the
moniker “Vicious” for short. He was a second year
Maegester-in-Training at Euryale University. We were competing
against one another in the New Babylon MIT rank matches, which St.
Luck’s was hosting this year.
All
second-year MITs were required to compete. The top-ranked MITs from
each school would then be eligible to compete in the Laurel Crown
Race. The object of the race was to bring back an assigned target.
Targets were either rogare demons or priceless artifacts that needed
to be recovered. Participation in the Laurel Crown Race was
voluntary, but the MIT who returned to New Babylon with his (or in my
case, her) target before any of the others, won the coveted Laurel
Crown. Winning the Laurel Crown often set a future Maegester up for
life because winners could choose where they wanted to spend their
fourth-semester residency. And ofttimes, those residencies turned
into permanent positions. Everyone else would receive offers, but it
would be the Council that decided which of those residency positions
they accepted.
Last
semester, we’d been given our first field assignment. It was an
assignment that had been full of rogare demon attacks and other
lethal situations. That assignment had lasted a mere three months and
I’d barely survived it. My residency would last for twice as long,
so I was well aware of how important the residency venue would be.
Winning the right to choose where I spent next semester, not to
mention who I would be working for, would go far in preserving not
just my happiness, but also my life. The Maegester who was judging
the match, a middle-aged man with thinning, ginger-colored hair and a
near permanent frown, called out for us to begin.
I’d
watched Vicious spar with other MITs. He was smart. His infliction of
pain would be very calculated, very precise. There was nothing
personal about his desire to beat me. He just wanted to win the match
so that he could retain his current Primoris ranking at Euryale and
compete for the Laurel Crown. Of course, I was similarly motivated.
Vicious
gave me a curt bow, his long, black, razor-cut bangs briefly falling
forward before he shook them back and used his waning magic to fire
up a weapon, a flaming broadsword. It hissed and spit with fury in
the damp air of the Gridiron as Vicious raised it toward me in an
opening invitation to spar.
As
a sparring partner, Vicious looked fairly intimidating. His front
teeth were shiny, silver, and sharply pointed (likely, his real ones
had been knocked out in fights) and he was much larger than me. He
wore the usual black leather training pants and vest, but he’d
elected to go shirtless underneath the vest. I guessed it was an
intentional show of muscle, literally. He flexed his forearms and
grinned at me, his message clear: I might be a woman playing a man’s
game, but he wasn’t going to spare me any blows.
That
suited me fine. Sparing me blows wouldn’t win me the match.
About
the Author:
Jill
Archer writes dark, genre-bending fantasy from rural Maryland. Her
novels include Dark Light of Day, Fiery Edge of Steel, and White
Heart of Justice. She loves cats, coffee, books, movies, day
tripping, and outdoor adventuring.
Website/blog:
http://jillarcherauthor.wordpress.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/archer_jill
Tour
giveaway details
$50
Amazon eGift Certificate (or bookseller of winner’s choice)
(international)
5
copies of White
Heart of Justice
(or an earlier book in the series, winner’s choice) (international
so long as Book Depository ships to your address)
Dark
Light of Day
themed SWAG pack (incudes signed copy of book and other awesome
goodies) (US only)
Fiery
Edge of Steel
themed SWAG pack (incudes signed copy of book and other awesome
goodies) (US only)
White
Heart of Justice
themed SWAG pack (incudes signed copy of book and other awesome
goodies) (US only)
Contents
of Prize Packs
DARK
LIGHT OF DAY PRIZE PACK
Signed
print copy of Dark Light of Day
Handmade
bookmark with charm
Natural
Face Paint Kit
Orange
Silk Flower Hair Clip
Atomic
Fireball Candies
Signed
copy of galley pages of scene that inspired prize pack
FIERY
EDGE OF STEEL PRIZE PACK
Signed
print copy of Fiery Edge of Steel
Handmade
bookmark with charm
“The
Queen of Flowers” T-shirt Tank Top
Set
of three Silver Glass Mercury Votive Holders
Petite
Pear Candies
Signed
copy of galley pages of scene that inspired prize pack
WHITE
HEART OF JUSTICE PRIZE PACK
Signed
print copy of White Heart of Justice
Handmade
bookmark with charm
White
Crystal Headband
Vintage
Star Pin
White
Chocolate Meltaways
Signed
copy of galley pages of scene that inspired prize pack
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