Young Adult Fantasy
Date Published: 07-13-2024
Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
Wolf and demon born…
…under storm the land is torn.
Tendrils of darkness reach from the depths of her mind and shadows flicker around every corner. Still reeling from Raven’s horrific display of power, Kari suffers in silence.
When Guine finally returns with stories of a mirror that could help him with his problems, Kari finds herself hoping that maybe, just maybe, it could help with hers as well.
With the promise of a relatively straightforward outing, Kari, Ari, and Guine set forth to find the mirror.
But what they find beyond the looking-glass threatens not only Kari and her sanity, but also the world she loves.
read an excerpt below
About the Author
Valerie Storm was raised in Tucson, Arizona. Growing up, she fell in love with everything fantasy. When she wasn’t playing video games, she was writing. By age ten, she began to write her own stories as a way to escape reality. When these stories became a full-length series, she considered the path to sharing with other children & children-at/heart looking for a place to call home.
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Excerpt from "The Storm Breaks"
Suddenly
a hand shot out of the wall ahead of her, giving her no time to react or slow
her pace as it grabbed her shoulder. Kari pulled at the fingers, tugging at
their grasp, trying to hurry. She had to escape the damn water!
Lightning sparked along her claws.
She raised her hand to attack again, intending to cut the fingers right off of
her.
A
familiar voice growled, “Do it and we’re dead.”
Kari froze long enough for the hand
to pull her straight into the wall. She stumbled through and fell face-first on
something hard and cool.
Groaning,
she rolled onto her back and looked up into the sweat-dotted, strained, and
frowning face of Guine. Above him hung a ceiling of some kind of jagged,
translucent, blue rock.
“Why did you stop?” he demanded
rather angrily. “I said we had to keep moving, didn’t I?”
For a moment Kari thought she was
still waiting for the water to overtake her. That filthy, disgusting-smelling,
murky water. Slowly she realized they had changed locations again; now they
were in some sort of cavern. Completely dry and relatively safe, at least for
the moment.
Kari
jumped up and bared her teeth at Guine. “You didn’t say if I stopped that would happen!”
“Why
would I say, ‘don’t stop’ if that wasn’t a vitally important thing to do?!”
“You’re
often unclear and exaggerate!” she snapped back.
They glared at each other for a long
time. He was mad, but she was madder. He had not been very upfront with her
about this wretched maze, and that enraged her. She did not need the Catalyst
to fuel her anger; her heart thrummed against her ribs, taking all of her
breath with it, and it had not stopped since that first room.
The danger here was real, and yet
intangible. She had faced so many people who wanted her dead, or worse. But
this place would kill her at the slightest mistake.
Finally, Guine sighed, his face
relaxing into exhaustion. He turned away from her.
“It doesn’t matter now. It’s done.
But now…now we face a problem.”
The walls were just like the
ceiling, seemingly made of something crystalline. Ahead of her, she could see
an opening in the circular room.
“What problem? Besides being in this
yutemi you’ve created, that is.”
Guine chose to ignore her snappy
tone. “We got off-track. Things will change now. I can find the way since I did
make this as an option, but now it will take us longer.”
Kari’s gaze slowly trailed back to
him. He’d said…what? Two or three days? Without food.
Now it would take longer?
“Just how much longer are you
talking about, Guine?” Kari hissed.
He shrugged, not quite nonchalant,
but rather resigned. “Maybe tack on a week. At the very least.”
Kari’s mouth dried. Already her
stomach rumbled; now that the adrenaline had passed through her system, she was
hungry. She wasn’t stupid. She knew her body would be capable of going quite a
long time without sustenance, but that long? And what of their water supply?
She felt for the bag, but her
fingers were too numb to reach inside for the waterskin. The cavern suddenly
seemed very small.
“Guine…”
“Thirst will not be a real issue,”
Guine said as if he had read her mind. “When I designed this way, I made a room
for myself so that I could survive if I slipped up. There will be a room ahead
that provides fresh, drinkable water. Hopefully, we can store enough to last us
the rest of the time if we ration it.”
“And what about food?”
He hesitated. “The room…also has a
solution for that. For humans. There’s no way we could know it would work for
you, or at the very least not kill you.”
Kari stared past him. The only exit
out of the cavern they were in was a single tunnel that turned sharply into
darkness.
“I will not die in here, Guine.”
“I don’t intend for you to,” he said
wearily. “But if things were serious at all to you before, it’s worse now.” He
walked to one of the walls and sat down. “We should rest before we go on.
Exhaustion and stress make the mind do stupid things.”
Kari didn’t move. She thought of a
time long ago when she had left behind Snow Shade. Then she had perhaps gone a
day or so without a real meal. It was like torture to her, weakening her body
and senses until she had come across something to eat.
She could have adjusted to the idea
of three days with no food. But more than a week?
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