NEW
RELEASE and EXCERPT
Wings of the Butterfly
(Threads of Magic Book 2)
(Threads of Magic Book 2)
by S.
M. Pace
Wings of the Butterfly, the second book in the Threads of Magic series, is due to be
released soon. Sign up for the author's newsletter to be notified of its release. Currently available: Shadow of the Wolf.
Wings of the Butterfly is currently on tour
with Reading Addiction Book Tours. The tour stops here
today for an excerpt. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
Three nations teeter on the brink of war, and caught in the middle, a
brother and sister find themselves surrounded by dangers they never imagined.
Adopted by the Yurha, Toby still struggles to properly fit in. Hunting in
the forest, he stumbles across a jeweled cuff that attaches to his wrist and
won’t come off. Afraid at first, he is soon thrilled to discover the cuff powerful magic. But as he tries to control it,
he realizes the cuff is still linked to its original owner - an owner who will
go to cruel lengths to get his magic back.
Miles away, Toby’s twin sister Ora struggles with life in a strange city.
She and family have fled Yois for Nietza, where Ora will not be arrested for
possessing magic. However, Nietza is not the magical paradise Ora had imagined.
Despite her new friends, she can’t feel safe in a country where women are
little more than pawns.
Secrets, brutal murders and war edging ever closer drive both siblings
from their safe places. Failure to stop those who pursue them will mean a fate
worse than death.
Excerpt
Toby worked at the
wrist cuff, but it hardly budged. It had
become something like a piece of his arm.
Leaves shuddered overhead. A
pair of squirrels raced over the branches, chittering. Toby sat alone against the bole of a tree, a
half mile or so from the settlement. No
sign of an oversized hawk, but he had a better idea than scanning the
branches. He’d ended up inside the
hawk’s mind before. He thought he could
do it again.
He stripped away his
leggings and loin cloth and laid them beside him. Naked, he shivered, despite the unusual heat
of the mid-autumn day. A thrill of fear
coursed through him at the other part of his plan. The memory of pale fur sprouting across his
arm stuck hard in Toby’s head. If it means what I think it means, the
thought drifted as Toby steadied his breathing.
He pressed his back against the rough bark and sank into the wrist cuff.
The wellspring of
magic nearly swallowed him. He tried to
imitate what Kyat had done, pushing his awareness away from the crystals, and
into the metal. A different power, with the
taste of metal, stung him.
Blackness swallowed
him. He fought to stay aware. Everything shifted, spun, and someone else’s
mind swept over and around him. He
glimpsed scaled claws and dark feathers.
The hawk.
He watched through
the creature’s eyes, and felt what it felt.
Spasms wracked its body. One claw flattened, flexed, the scales melting
away to reveal a misshapen foot. Toby
cried out at the pain of even that small success. Then the foot twitched and turned back into a
claw, and with a strangled cry, the hawk took flight.
Toby was thrown back
into his body. He knew the hawk hid
somewhere at the north-eastern edge of the pack’s territory, where the hills
began to give way to mountains. He’d
also learned something else; the feel of a type of magic he’d never experienced
before. He sent his mind back into the wrist
cuff.
He pushed away the
bits of his magic, and other magics he couldn’t name. In the midst of those, the cuff held a bundle
of power that curled and writhed.
Shifting magic.
To wear fur and run
on all fours. To howl and tumble with
his brothers. To run with the pack
during full moon hunts, and take down a deer with his teeth. To be a wolf, like his family. To be truly one of them.
Toby willed every
ounce of those thoughts into the magic and spread it through his body.
A cramp struck his lower
belly and doubled him over, then dropped him to his knees. His chest tightened and, for a moment, panic
seized him, and he wanted to shove the magic away.
He breathed slowly
while spasms wracked his body. The bones
in his legs cracked first, shifting, and forcing him to stand awkwardly on his
hands and feet. Then his arms and back
twisted. His face crunched,
stretched. His shoulders popped. Fur grew, like tiny pins bursting out of his
skin. The whine of an animal spilled
from his throat.
About the Author
S. M. Pace lives with her husband in the wilds of Virginia, along with a
pond full of fish, a turtle and too many squirrels. When she's not writing,
she's wrangling a dozen pre-schoolers, learning a new recipe or reading.
Links
Amazon US - N/A
Amazon UK - N/A
