Wings of the Butterfly
by S.M. Pace
Genre: YA Fantasy
Expected Publication: August 30th, 2014
Book Summary:
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 carries 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.
by S.M. Pace
Genre: YA Fantasy
Expected Publication: August 30th, 2014
Book Summary:
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 carries 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 from Wings of the Butterfly
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.
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