Scene from a wip, candles, and miscellany

Dear Reader,

I have a couple of things to mention in this post.

First, Briarwick Candles reached out to me a couple of months ago and asked if I’d be willing to collaborate with them in creating a trio of candles inspired by my Wraith Kings series, specifically RADIANCE and EIDOLON. My answer: Hell yes!

So this Friday, Briarwick rolled out three candles along with wax melts and linen sprays titled BRISHEN, ILDIKO, and SAGGARA. And they smell amazing! I love all three, though SAGGARA is my favorite because I’m a big fan of citrus scents. If you’d like to check them out, click on the link and have a look-see. Just be sure to click on one of the candle pages, then product detail to learn more about the candle options as well as the wax melts and the linen sprays. https://briarwickcandles.com/collections/grace-draven-officially-licensed-collection

Second, I’m hugely fortunate to once again work with my artist Louisa Gallie on two book covers and a couple of art cards, with two more book covers and some endpaper illustrations for upcoming titles. If you’re not familiar with Louisa’s name, she’s the artist who illustrated the covers (not the special editions) for MASTER OF CROWS, THE BRUSH OF BLACK WINGS and ENTREAT ME as well as NIGHT TIDE and THE IPPOS KING. I’ve known and worked with Lou for almost two decades and named a main character after her (Louvaen – ENTREAT ME). I can’t wait to see what she designs for these current projects. I’m crossing my fingers in the hope I might convince her to let me show off part of one of her preliminary sketches as sort of a BTS peek of the work that goes on with book cover illustration.

Third, I’m working with my proofreader Amanda and Evil Editor Mel to get some of my existing novellas into print. The goal is to roll them out by early fall, but I’m not writing that in blood. Every time I guesstimate a completion date, I’m usually off by a mile, but I still have to set a goal. I’ll keep everyone updated as I move this project down the line.

Last but not least, here’s a rough draft scene from my WIP short novel THE MOON RAVEN. This novel sprang from a response to an inquiry I received from Audible via my agent. Until that moment, this story wasn’t even a blip on my mental radar. I spent a weekend coming up with a rough idea and sent it to my agent who put together a proposal and sent it on to Audible. While Audible ultimately gave it a pass, the original inquiry inspired a story that has since taken off with all thrusters. I’ve been madly tapping away at it alongside my other WIP. I can’t tell you how nice it is to no longer have my imagination buried by the brain fog caused by chemotherapy.

This scene may end up in the deleted pile at a later date or be significantly altered by the time we get to the final draft, but here’s where it stands now. I hope you enjoy.

THE MOON RAVEN – by Grace Draven

WIP scene – subject to change/deletion

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Disaris refilled Bron’s teacup. “Do you remember the time when we were playing naka, and I kicked the ball into that hornet’s nest?”

             He paused in sipping his tea to study her over the cup’s rim with a jaundiced eye. He lowered the cup. “How could I forget? I ended up with twenty-three stings and a split lip because of it.”

             “Accidents on both counts,” she replied, cringing with embarrassment at the memory of his injuries, even now.

             Spring that year had begun a week before Disaris had gifted Bron with a split lip, and she’d done so with the best of intentions.

             Every able-bodied person in the village not already tasked with important work such as blacksmithing or coopering went to the fields to work, including every child no longer on lead strings.

             During the dinner hour, when the village women brought food to those laboring in the fields, several of the older boys and girls gathered in a nearby meadow for a quick game of naka. Though she’d been second to last to be chosen, excitement sent the blood racing through Disaris at being picked by Celak, her team’s captain. Even the disappointment of seeing Bron chosen for the opposing team didn’t curb her enthusiasm.

             When it was her turn to kick, she struck the ball hard enough to numb her foot. She watched with bated breath as the ball hurtled high across the meadow, straight at Bron who stood beneath the canopy of a majestic oak, waiting to catch it and ruin Disaris’s chance at scoring a point for her team. It had been his misfortune to stand beneath the one leafy branch that hid a hornet’s nest and even worse luck that her aim had found it.

             “Run, Disa! Run!”

             Celak’s bellowed command, echoed by her teammates, snapped her out of her trance. She ran, bolting across the pitch toward the tall stick someone had buried partway into the ground. A ring of woven rawhide hung tethered from the top, the prize of the game that one side strove to capture and the other side tried to keep.

             She kept one eye on Bron as she raced toward her goal, heart pounding in anticipation of dodging the ball he’d hurl at her or hearing the dreaded call-out of “Kicker fail! Point taken!”

             Neither came, and she halted mid-rush at the sound of pained yelps. The ball was nowhere to be seen, only Bron who stumbled farther into the pitch, waving his arms in wild contortions and swatting at his head and torso. Quick, shadowy movement encircled him as he battled a swarm of angry hornets doing their best to destroy the enemy who’d disturbed their nest.

             Ring prize forgotten, and her heart now in her throat, Disaris changed course, ignoring the dismayed cries from one set of players and cheers from the others. The furious buzz of enraged insects reached her ears before she reached Bron, but she didn’t pause, cannoning into him with enough force to knock them both to the ground.

             Bron let out a gusty “oof,” his eyes wide. Disaris slapped at his head and arms, smashing hornets to smears, even as more turned their wrath and stingers on her. Her cries joined his, and the two rolled on the ground together, swatting at each other until Celak led the charge to rescue them from their winged adversaries.

             By the time they were free of the last avenging hornet, Disaris felt like she’d been beaten with a hammer, and Bron looked like a cave troll, welted and swollen from the venom pumped into him by multiple stings.

             “What is wrong with you, Disa?” He’d snapped out the question past the split lip she’d given him with one of her slaps. A trickle of blood bisected his chin, and he wiped it away with one hand, leaving behind a crimson smear.

             She’d blinked at him, trying not to cry in front of her audience as the stings she’d earned in her failed attempt at rescue burned like tiny bonfires on her skin. “I was trying to help you.”

             It was true. Every sane thought had emptied from her mind, and she’d simply reacted. Bron was in trouble. He needed her. The rest of the world simply faded in importance.

             “Stop helping me,” he muttered and limped away, accompanied by Celak who had given her a disgusted look over his shoulder.

             She’d spent the next two days trapped at home and slathered in a foul-smelling poultice her mother insisted would put her to rights before the week was done.

             “Even if you have a few welts left, you’ll just have to suffer them. Your da needs you back in the fields.” Gheza jin Arman was a kind, albeit no-nonsense woman. Her sympathy for her daughter’s misery extended only so far, especially when there was work to be done. “And stop crying. Bron might be mad right now, but he doesn’t hate you. He’s a forgiving sort. He’d have to be with as much as you bother him.”

             A sullen Disaris had sniffled back her remaining tears and returned to the fields with her father and brothers the following morning, resolved to finding Bron and apologizing.

             She cornered him between a seed wagon and a pair of water pots placed nearby for thirsty laborers who needed a quick drink. He stood before her, shielded head to toe from the sun by trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a lightweight linen cowl. Even his hands were covered with gloves.

             He stared at her from the cowl’s shadows, his ice-blue eyes wary, as if he expected her to knock him to the ground again. His sharp greeting of “What?” didn’t bode well and weakened Disaris’s belief in her mother’s statement that Bron easily forgave transgressions against him, even well-intentioned ones.

             She clasped her hands in front of her, knotting her fingers together so tightly her knuckles turned white. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really was trying to help, and I didn’t mean to hit you in the mouth.” She winced at the sight of his bottom lip, still swollen and scabbed over in the spot where she’d struck him. “I swear it.”

             Her gaze moved over him. His clothing hid any lingering injuries from her inspection. The cowl didn’t hide things as well, and she spotted the welt curving under his right eye and another that bisected his left eyebrow, its redness easy to see among the thick white hairs there.

             She suspected there were more welts on him. Like her, he reeked of her mother’s rank poultice, offered to Bron’s mother along with a plea for patience regarding Disaris’s graceless affection for her son.

             He’d stared wordlessly at Disaris for long, agonizing moments. She thought she might burst with the agony of waiting for his acceptance or rejection of her apology. Finally he shrugged off one of the seed satchels he carried and held it out to her. “Stand on my right,” he said. “This way we don’t knock elbows when we sow.”

             With that statement, the sun grew brighter, the sky bluer, and Disaris’s world was reborn anew and beautiful. She thought her face might crack in half from the wide grin she gave him as she eagerly took the satchel he offered. Bron didn’t return her grin, but his guarded expression softened.

The two set to work, side-by-side, in companionable silence, uninterrupted only once by Bron’s softly uttered “Thank you, Disa.”

Seventeen years and a thousand hardships later, and the memory of that childhood event still made her wistful. She gave a huff of mock indignation as Bron continued to watch her with the same intensity that had always disconcerted people, except for her. “Are you still holding that against me after all this time? I said I was sorry, and you thanked me later.” She studied his face, once more noting the slight crookedness of his nose—proof of it being broken at least once—and the mottled pink scar engraved his left cheek. “Did the person who broke your nose say they were sorry?”

The slight uplift at the corners of his mouth made the scar ripple in spots. “Apologies aren’t usually exchanged on the battlefield.” He drained his cup a second time, and she refilled it a third, emptying the teapot. He toasted her in silent gratitude. “How old were we when we lost the fight to those cursed hornets?”

“Eleven and thirteen,” she said without hesitation.

His eyebrows rose. “That long ago?” His gaze drifted, taking on the far-away focus of recollection. “I remember you then. Messy hair because you wore it loose instead of in a braid.” His mouth quirked again. “You said it gave you a headache, especially when your mother braided your hair.” He lowered his head to stare into his teacup. “The skirt you wore that day was brown, and your shirt a faded red. You didn’t even realize you’d put it on inside-out until Kaelyn jin Haro pointed it out to all of us.”

Disaris tried to ignore the heat rising in her cheeks, touched by the clarity of his memory and abashed that it was those particular details he recalled. She rolled her eyes at the mention of Kaelyn’s name. “She was helpful like that.”   

He laughed then. “She was obnoxious.” His gaze lifted once more to focus on her. “I can’t recall a single memory from then that you weren’t part of. You were my childhood, Disa.”

Her insides clenched at his words. This man, as familiar to her as her own reflection and more precious to her than any other living being except her daughter, had changed in ways uncounted yet still remained at his core as she remembered him—noble and guarded, patient and courageous, humble and insightful. In one awful moment of terrible judgment and immature choices, she’d abandoned his friendship to follow a misguided infatuation resulting in life-threatening consequences. She would die with that regret and be buried with it.

In the throes of guilt, she’d punished herself with the belief that her circumstances had merely been Fate righting a wrong and doling out penance for bad decisions made. She’d tolerated Celak’s cruelties with that thought in mind. Reuniting with Bron again made her wonder if such self-scourging had been just as wrong-head. Somehow, she knew he would be horrified by her reasoning and the twisted path it followed.

She touched his hand, twining her fingers with his, and gently squeezed. “You were mine too,” she said. “A great deal has changed since that time.” It was her turn to toast him. She released his hand and raised her cup to one of the most formidable battle mages of the age, renowned among and feared by the armies of three kingdoms. A far cry from the skinny, awkward boy she still adored. “You’ve become famous.”

Every hint of humor died in his expression, replaced by a grimness that hardened his pale features and thinned his mouth. He didn’t raise his cup in return. “And you’ve become hunted.”

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