Four
Feasts Till Darkness
Book
One
Christian
A. Brown
Genre:
Fantasy Romance
Date
of Publication: September 9, 2014
ISBN:
978-1495907586
Number
of pages: 540
Word
Count: 212K
Cover
Artist: Brian Garabrant
Book
Description:
"Love
is what binds us in brotherhood, blinds us from hate, and makes us
soar with desire.”
Morigan
lives a quiet life as the handmaiden to a fatherly old sorcerer named
Thackery. But when she crosses paths with Caenith, a not wholly
mortal man, her world changes forever. Their meeting sparks long
buried magical powers deep within Morigan. As she attempts to
understand her newfound abilities, unbidden visions begin to plague
her--visions that show a devastating madness descending on one of the
Immortal Kings who rules the land.
With
Morigan growing more powerful each day, the leaders of the realm soon
realize that this young woman could hold the key to their
destruction. Suddenly, Morigan finds herself beset by enemies, and
she must master her mysterious gifts if she is to survive.
Book
Trailer: http://youtu.be/8E_RVXgpqB8
Excerpts
Feast
of Fates, Excerpt #1
Morigan
took the bracelet.
“I accept your
offering.” The Wolf’s face lit and she thought that he would leap
at her. “Yet first, I have a request.”
“Anything, my
Fawn.”
“I would like to
see…what you are. The second body that shares your soul. Show me
your fangs and claws,” she commanded.
Perhaps it was the
steadiness of her voice, how she ordered him to bare himself as if he
belonged to her that made the Wolf’s heart roar to comply. He did
not shed his skin but for the whitest moons of the year, and even
then, so far from the city and never in front of another. In a sense,
he was as much a virgin as she. With an unaccustomed shyness, he
found himself undressing before the Fawn, confused for a speck as to
who was the hunter. The flare of her nostrils, the intensity of her
stare that ate at him for once.
I
have chosen well for a mate. She is as much a Wolf as I, he
thought, kicking off his boots and then shimmying his pants down to
join the rest of his clothing. No bashful maiden was Morigan, and she
did not look away from his nakedness, but appreciated what she saw:
every rough, hairy, huge bit of him.
He howled and fell
to all fours. Bones shifted and snapped, rearranging under his skin
like skeletal gears. From his head, chest and loins, the soft black
hair thickened and spread over his twisting flesh. His heaving became
guttural and sloppy, and when he tossed his head up in a throe of
agony or pleasure, his beard had coated his face, and she noticed
nothing but white daggers of teeth. Wondrously Morigan witnessed the
transformation, watched him swell with twice the muscle he had
possessed as a man, saw his hands and feet shag over with fur and
split the soil with black claws. Another howl and a final
gristle-crunching shudder (his hindquarters snapping into place, she
thought) signified the end of the change.
Her dreams did not
do Caenith justice. Here was a beast twice the size of a mare with
jaws that could swallow her to the waist. Here was a monster that had
stalked and ruled the Untamed. A lord of fang and claw. The birds and
weaker animals vanished, knowing a deadly might was near. Around her,
the Wolf paced; making the ground tremble with power; ravishing her
with his cold gray gaze; huffing and blasting her with his forceful
breaths. While the scent of his musk was choking, it was undeniably
Caenith’s, if rawer and unwashed.
Morigan was not
afraid, and was flushed with heat and shaking as she slipped the
bracelet on and knelt. She did not flinch as the Wolf lay behind and
about her like a great snuffling rug and placed his boulder of a head
in her lap. No, she stroked his long ears and his wrinkled snout. A
maiden and her Wolf. Soon the birds returned, sensing this peace and
chirping in praise of it. And neither Morigan nor the Wolf could
recall a time—if ever there was one—where they had felt so
complete.
Feast
of Fates, Excerpt #2
Menos
was darker than usual: its clouds as black as the shadow of fear that
haunted Mouse. The city felt more menacing to her. She saw shadows in
every corner, noticed the glint of every ruffian’s blade or slave’s
chain as though they were all intended for her. The warning of
Alastair played inside her skull on a loop of nightmare theater.
A
hand over her mouth startles her awake, and she twists for the dagger
in her pillowcase until she recognizes the shadowy apparition atop
her, who hisses at her to calm.
“Alastair?”
she gasps.
The hand
unclenches and the willowy shadow retreats to more of its own; she
can only see the scruff of his red beard in the dark.
“Get up, Mouse.
Get dressed.”
Her mentor sounds
annoyed or confused; she is each, but finds her garments quickly
enough anyway.
“I don’t like
good-byes, so let’s not call this that,” Alastair says with a
sigh. “But it will be a parting, nonetheless. You need to go low.
Lower than you’ve ever been before. A new name won’t be enough.
You’ll need a new face. I don’t know how or who, but the sacred
contract of our order has been broken. Your safety has been bought.”
Mouse
knows the who and how, and as she glances up from her boot-lacing to
explain to her mentor her predicament, she sees that he is gone. Just
empty shadows, echoing words, and the sound of her heartbeat drowning
out all the rest.
She expected the
dead man and his icy master to emerge from the dim nooks and doorways
of the buildings she passed at any instant. With a hand on her knives
and a fury to her step, she swept down the sidewalk; no carriages for
her today, as they were essentially cages on wheels—too easy to
trap oneself in. With its sooty storefronts and their wrought-iron
windows, its black streetlamps that rose about her like the bars of a
prison, Menos was constricting itself around her, and she had to get
out.
You’ve
survived worse than the nekromancer, she
coached herself, though she wasn’t certain that was true. She
hurried through the grimness of Menos, dodging pale faces and
quickening her step with every sand. By the time she arrived at the
fleshcrafter’s studio, she was sweating and stuck to her cloak. She
looked down the desolate sidewalk and up the long sad face of the
tall tower with its many broken or boarded-over windows. When she was
sure she wasn’t being pursued by the phantoms that her paranoia had
conjured, she pulled back a rusted door that did not cry out as it
should have, given its appearance, but slid along well-formed grooves
through the dust. She raced through the door and hauled it closed.
It was dark and
flickering with half-dead lights in the garbage-strewn hallway in
which she stood. Mouse picked through the trash with her feet,
tensing as she passed every dark alcove in the abandoned complex.
Hives, these places were called, and used to house enormous numbers
of lowborn folk under a single roof. In Menos, even the shabbiest
roof was a desirable commodity, so the building’s ghostly vacancy
meant that it likely was condemned by disease at one point. Soon the
stairwell she sought appeared, and she tiptoed down it, careful not
to slip on the stairs, which were slick with organic grunge.
Couldn’t
have picked a nicer studio,
she cursed. I’ll
be lucky if this fleshcrafter leaves me with half a lip to drink
with. Lamentably,
speed and discretion were her two goals in choosing where to have her
face remodeled. Such stipulations cut the more promising
fleshcrafters off the list and left her with the dregs. She hadn’t
put much thought into what she would have done, or even if she would
end up hideously disfigured. Monstrous disfigurement could even work
in her favor, as she bore an uncanny resemblance to that
crow-eviscerated woman whom she suspected was the object of the
nekromancer’s dark desire. I’ll
take ugly over dead. Over whatever he has in mind for me.
About
the Author
Christian
A. Brown has written creatively since the age of six. After spending
most of his career in the health and fitness industry, Brown quit his
job to care for his mother when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins
lymphoma in 2010.
Having
dabbled with the novel that would eventually become Feast of Fates
for over a decade, Brown was finally able to finish the project. His
mother, who was able to read a beginning version of the novel before
she passed away, has since imbued the story with deeper sentiments of
loss, love, and meaning. He is proud to now share the finished
product with the world.
Links
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