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Logline:
Kayleana Rosendale, a summoner in hiding, must face her past and contract with a demon as she vowed never to do before a fire breathing beast destroys everything she knows.
Blurb:
Knight trainee Kaylen abandoned her vows to become a forest guide in the farthest reach of the kingdom known as The Wilds. She escaped the persecution of summoners by keeping her ability to contract with demons hidden. Until, a decade later, Master Wizard Elon and a company of Crown soldiers seek her out.
Instead of her death they want her help stopping a winged monster rampaging across the kingdom. But Kaylen swore never to have anything to do with summoning again. When betrayal forces her hand she ends up bound to the second most powerful demon: Kylihr, the incubus Lord General of Unbye.
Even the captivating demon lord may not be enough for this foe.
Success does not ensure Kaylen or Kylihr's safety. Will her countrymen let them live in peace? Or is the antagonism towards summoners and demons too strong?
The kingdom is on the brink of destruction and Kaylen is their last hope.
First 1000 words:
Prologue
King Yulon's hands trembled as he watched another town burn.
The monstrous beast wheeled in the sky, wings spanning thirty feet across the breath of its massive, scaled body. It glittered like molten gold in the failing light of day as the creature glided on the wind; it twisted and turned, dodging arrow and spear, both graceful and brutish in its viciousness. As if possessed, the fiend swept upon the town leaving fire and screaming and death in its wake. It climbed the skies screeching its victory only to circle and descend on a different section until so much smoke rose from the ruins that it obscured all but the burst of flame and the glint of gold.
King Yulon's army did what it could; soldiers pulled lords, merchants, and servants alike from the chaos, evacuating as much of the town as they could while their fellow archers lined every rooftop not aflame. Many were buried beneath the ruins and the bodies of still more were charred beyond recognition in the streets.
How could one creature cause so much destruction?
The beast's tail, as thick around as two men and twice as long, decimated a building. The screams of the archers reached the king even where he watched from the relative safety of a nearby hill. A fit of fury took him, and Yulon slammed his fist into a tree. He cursed and shook out his aching hand. The clink of armor as his guards shifted uneasily reminded him where he was. Yulon could not afford such displays. Not after his father's madness and his brother's death.
Straightening, he exhaled slowly. No amount of deep breathing, however, settled the anxiety and helplessness that ate at him. Yeltain was the fifth town in two months to be destroyed and that did not include the two smaller villages nor the army outpost along the border which were razed before reports of the beast reached the palace.
So many dead and nothing fazed the creature: no weapon or mage spell or wizard's charm so much as dented a scale. It fought from the sky and his best archers and spearmen were useless against it. Its wings and belly were as impenetrable as the rest of its burnished hide.
It did not help that they knew next to nothing about the creature. The kingdom's best advisors and scholars at his disposal and all anyone could tell Yulon was that there were no records of anything like it.
And that it killed as easily with tail and claw as with fire.
Yulon watched the beast drag a man off a roof. Nausea turned his stomach and made him grateful he was too far to see the gore as it bit the man in half. Finally sated, it seemed, the monster rose from the smoking wreckage.
It flew east towards the Ragdul Mountains. Scouts reported that was where it roosted. Consequently, that was where Yulon was leading his army. They would face the beast in its den far away from the homes of his subjects. Yulon let his shoulders sag as he rubbed a hand across his eyes. He hissed as the abraded skin stung. Lowering his hand, he saw where the bark of the tree split the skin. He sighed.
He was leading his men to their deaths.
Still he couldn't sit within the safety of the palace while his people were slaughtered. His advisors argued against it, of course, but even they were forced to admit that there would be nothing left to rule if the beast wasn't stopped. And now, seeing its awesome might in person, it was clear that even the palace would not be safe from its attack.
He'd rather die in battle than cowering in his chambers.
They didn't stand a chance though. Scholars had combed the palace archives, generals had searched military accounts, and magic users of every discipline had been consulted; nothing remotely similar to the creature was uncovered. That left only one possibility: the beast was not from their side of the veil.
That was a major problem. It meant that if any records of the creature did exist, they would be with the summoners. The summoners that the late King Halemon, Yulon's father, ordered executed, their headquarters razed, and their texts burned.
Yulon buried his face in his hands as grief swamped him. He had lost so much to the Order of Knights, the organization to which all summoners belonged. Their coup had cost his older brother, Atolin's heir, his life and ushered King Halemon's descent into madness. Always the overlooked second son, Yulon suddenly found himself king of an angry, broken country.
He should have put a stop to the persecution. Some summoners had fought for the Crown against their own, but the Betrayal, as the Order's grab for power was known, had been too great and the country's grief too deep. Yulon's grief had been too deep. And so he publicly announced the surviving summoners innocent while privately doing nothing to halt their suffering.
Now he needed their knowledge and there were no summoners left.
Well, if his suspicions were correct, there was at least one.
The beast couldn't have brought itself over. The veil only parted for humans: humans with summoning magic. Yulon wasn't sure why – one of his myriad of scholars could probably say – but he knew it was what had made the Knights so powerful.
Yulon pinched the bridge of his nose. His head throbbed. He always had a headache these days.
"Your Majesty, there is a wizard here who insists he talk to you. He was carrying this, Sire."
Yulon turned at the sound of his cousin, Brenden's, voice. The captain of his personal guard held his arms extended with a blade in a non-descript leather scabbard resting across his palms. Yulon frowned and took the sword. He drew it from its scabbard and blinked. His breath stilled in his lungs as he stared. He raised the sword, mesmerized, as the black blade absorbed rather than reflected light.
