Today, I am showcasing a snippet from my sweet medieval romance – A Voice in the Air.
Scene Set – Cadi is in trouble. She crossed a line.
Excerpt -
Sunday morning the church bell called everyone to mass. Cadi lay on her cot, staring at the ceiling. It was not her room. It was a cell; three stone walls and a thick wooden door with a small window. In the far corner, her chamber pot. In the other, a small table on which lay a candle and a bowl. Inside it, the remains of her once-a-day meal. The abbot had confined her to this room for three days for her sin. He instructed her to think about what she had done and how she needed to beg forgiveness, not from him but from God.
Forgiveness for singing.
By the fourth day of funerals and working at The White Goat, she was physically and emotionally tired. The monks sang their funeral dirge for the final time. She had not meant to sing. But the release was overwhelming. Days of heartache, cries, and the sad faces of bewildered children had pushed her to an edge. She was unable to stop her voice. It rose above the monks’, singing the same words which she believed were asking God to save the souls of those lost.
The sheriff had grabbed her by the hair and dragged her from the chapel, yelling, “Be quiet, ye blasphemous wench. How dare ye violate such a sacred moment.”
She tried to reason with an angry abbot that she was just singing to help their voices reach God’s ears. He berated her for the impudence of her thinking she should sing such holy words or that God would listen to… her; an unmarried, childless woman. The scorn on his face as he looked down his long nose was like a giant rock crushing her soul.
She had sinned.
The church bell hushed.
She felt alone — abandoned.
As she had been so many years ago. Small, scared, and alone. The cold of winter biting through her cloak. Near death, she sang out to the heavens for a release from the pain of her hunger, the cold, and her discarded soul.
Warm arms rescued her. She embraced a childhood with loving parents and a warm home. Then the sickness came. Many died.
Again, she was alone.
There was a scratching at her door. She peered out. Enfys, the old woman, hunched over from her ancient years, peered up. “Out ye come, girl. Ye has places to be, and this be not one of them.”
Blurb and Links -
Leading an army of faeries and pixies into battle against mountain trolls was not what Cadi expected when she accepted the task of rescuing Ewen - the son of the Overseer of the Faeries.
Squire Ewen followed his liege into battle with a head full of romantic notions of knights, heroics, and damsels in distress. Being captured by a troll, thrown into a cave, and awaiting a hideous death was not how he had foreseen his adventure to play out.
Can Ewen stay out of trouble long enough for Cadi to rescue him? Will Cadi overcome her doubts and fears and bring her beloved Ewen home to Plucks Ridge?
Or will the petty evilness of The Scorned One defeat all and destroy the magickal realm?
If you love action, humour, quirky characters, and romance, then Daryl Devoré’s latest medieval fantasy romance – A Voice in the Air – is a must read.
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What a disgustingly misogynist world! Unfortunately very vivid and believable.
ReplyDeleteYay - I tried to make it exactly that.
DeleteWhat an evocative scene!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteTo be punished for singing. Her aloneness comes across very vivid
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteI'm pulling for Cadi. She comes across as very sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteOops. Didn't mean for that to be anonymous. LOL
ReplyDeleteLOL - it happens.
Delete