What I'm Querying
“Helena’s only chance to keep her friends safe is to make peace with the sorcerers who killed her mother.”
HELLHOUND
Contemporary Fantasy
115k
17-year-old "Spellhound" Helena Martin doesn't know who she hates more, the sorcerers who fired the magic-laced bullet or the gang-lord master who used her mother as a shield. With both factions hunting the remnants of her escaped pack, Helena flees Miami with a stolen book of powerful spell mandalas, hoping to lead them astray. But even her hidden aptitude for magic can't keep them off her tail.
Grief ridden, angry, and out of options, Helena finds herself trapped in a small town, where she struggles to keep the mundanes who took her in ignorant of her powers, even as her master's bounty hunters threaten their lives. Surrender might be the easiest way to save the people she’s grudgingly come to love, but if Helena wants to truly shed her life of violence, she has one last option: join forces with the sorcerers who killed her mother.
The Mark of Flight
The Markmasters Trilogy, Book I
Young Adult Fantasy - 119k
“When Princess Arianna’s kidnapping threatens to rekindle war, she faces a difficult choice: warn her kingdom of the enemy’s approach or risk her life to help the slave who sacrificed his freedom to rescue her.”
The council’s preference for her tractable cousin is Princess Arianna’s biggest worry until her most trusted companion, Markmaster Tashda, kidnaps her to rekindle the centuries-long war with the neighboring kingdom, Centoren. Though Arianna is willing to sacrifice almost anything the preservation of her homeland, she can't escape a company of enemy soldiers on her own.
A backwoods Mage and a stuttering stable boy are the last champions she would have asked for. Bay is an Innate Mage who can’t escape the impulse to heal the ravaged borderlands or the haunting absence of a master who taught him more Magic than anyone else seems to know. Worse is Shiro, a slave illegally owned by the inn harboring Tashda’s men. Horrified, Arianna vows to return home and stop the black-market trade, even if it means fighting the council for her crown.
Then one of Tashda’s deadliest men catches up and the glittering shield that bursts from Shiro’s hand shocks even him with the impossible: the slave is a Markmaster.
Bay departs to lead Tashda astray and Arianna sets her sights for home, but when Shiro is captured protecting her from slave-traders, she faces a difficult choice: warn her kingdom of the enemy's approach or risk her life to help the slave who sacrificed his freedom to rescue her.