A Fresh Excerpt from A Blossom at Midnight for Dec 21, 2021

T-18 days until the launch of this brand new YA epic fantasy! A Blossom at Midnight is now up for preorder and drops on January 7, 2021. To whet your appetite, please enjoy another fresh excerpt from the story below.

One earns a coveted place among royalty. Another is  imprisoned  by  her   betrothed , while the third is exiled until he can prove his worth. Can these three fae prevent a war?

Rejection has left fae courtier Laec wallowing in wine and disdainful of what he sees in the mirror. When Queen Elphame offers him a foreign commission, he jumps at the chance for a fresh start, but soon learns that healing his heart may inflame the very trouble his queen sent him to prevent.

Beautiful and eligible Çifta believes in the importance of duty. Wishing to please her father, she agrees to marry a powerful unseelie prince. But when she discovers his cold heart and attempts to break the engagement, the princess-to-be quickly finds herself in chains. Alone and trapped in a damp fortress, she cannot see a way out.

Half-fae Jess longs to leave her rural life. She’s always obeyed her mother’s commands to keep her pointed ears and winged familiars a secret, but the repressed teen is on the verge of rebellion. When she attends a flower festival and her secrets are discovered, it triggers a cascade of opportunity she never thought possible. As her exciting new life—and magic—blossoms, she learns that her mother has been keeping a much more serious secret from her, one that changes everything.

When a visit to another realm sparks a dark turn of events, it sets these three fae on a collision course with disaster. Will they wilt under pressure or become a thorny threat to evil?

A Blossom at Midnight is the poetic first book in The Scented Court, a new YA noblebright fantasy series by an award-winning author. If you like feisty protagonists, a dark villain, flora and fauna magic, slow-burn romance, and epic fables steeped in the beauty of nature, then you’ll love A.L. Knorr’s dreamy otherworld. Perfect for fans of Holly Black, Elise Kova, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.

Excerpt from A Blossom at Midnight;

When Marion kicked Jessica out of the house the next morning for moping, she went straight to the cliffs. Perched on a level, grassy section in the cliff face with her back against the granite and her gaze roving the horizon, thick condensation gathered over Rahamlar. A teacher had once told Jessica that it was thanks to the two deep rivers that converged there.

Beazle flapped around the cliff, nosing into cracks and crevices for bugs. He was usually asleep at this time, but he could feel Jessica’s discontent. He flew away from her, ranging out over the forest.

Jess’s vision flashed as she received an overhead view from Beazle. Clair was coming down the winding path leading to the base of the cliff. Jess whistled and Beazle zipped straight to her shoulder, then crawled into her hair. Jess began to descend.

A few moments later, Clair appeared at the base of the cliff with two baskets. She looked up, blocking her eyes from the sun. She pointed at the baskets.

“Coming,” Jess called, though the wind tore the words from her mouth.

Rare and tasty pushrooms grew in the dark, damp undergrowth of prickly sheldie trees. There weren’t many who enjoyed harvesting them, though almost everyone enjoyed eating them. The girls had found a large patch of them years ago and had sworn its location to secrecy so they could be the only ones to sell pushrooms at the market. Fried in a hot skillet with salted butter and herbs, they tasted a lot like steak. Thanks to their little business, they almost never wanted for pocket money.

Jessica descended, barefoot, taking the well-worn goat track she’d used a thousand times. Clair kicked Jessica’s shoes over to her when she reached the bottom. She toed them on, brushing grass and dirt from her skirt.

“What’s wrong with you?” Clair handed her one of the baskets.

Jess hooked it over her arm. “What makes you think anything is wrong?”

The girls walked away from the cliff and into the forest. “Marion almost bit my head off when I asked where you were.”

Jessica grunted. “We fought. Kind of.”

Clair’s dark brows pinched. “About the festival?”

“How did you guess?” Jessica kicked a cone off the path.

Clair let out a long breath. “Is she going to take you to Oubel again?”

“Yes.” Jessica pulled a face. “It’s not fair.”

Clair hitched her basket to the other hip as they ducked under the long fronds of preekness bushes. It smelled like dirty stockings, so Jessica held her breath until they were past the fae species of shrubs.

“It’s not just unfair, it’s confusing,” said Clair. “I don’t understand why she would want you to miss it. Or miss it herself, for that matter.”

Jessica was in the pitch of a heated inner battle. She was so well trained to keep her secrets that she half wondered if it might bring some kind of curse down upon her head if she spilled what Marion had always warned her to keep to herself. But rebellion and anger warred from the other side. Children with familiars were of interest to the king and queen, so what opportunity had she missed thanks to her mother? Whatever it was, she was too old to take advantage of it now, so what was the harm in attending the upcoming festival? For that matter, what was the harm in telling her best friend why? She opened her mouth and then closed it again, unable to break her promise, even in anger. She reached up to make sure her ears were covered.

“It’s not for me to say…” Clair began, then stalled.

Jess shot a weary look at her friend. “You have to say it now, Clair. You can’t start and then clam up.”

Clair spoke slowly, uncertainly. “You’re just so risk-averse, such a good girl. You’ve always done what you’re told, your whole life.”

Jess’s brow wrinkled. “Not always. Marion doesn’t like it that I climb the cliffs.”

“But you waited until she finally caved and gave you permission before you did it. Remember? Because I do. We were ten. And there’s other examples. You never raced Apple at the midsummer carnival, even though she was fast enough to win when she was young, because Marion didn’t want you to fall and break your neck. But now Apple is too old and you’re too heavy, so you’ll never know if she’d have won because you never tried. And Marion never lets you come to the Rosebud Valley swimming hole with us. The hole is the best thing on a hot day, and you don’t even know it. I mean, is it because you don’t know how to swim? Or is Marion afraid you’ll drown or something?”

Jessica could swim, but she wouldn’t do it in public because it meant she could expose her ears. She might be able to keep her head out of the water, but Marion had warned her that kids tended to rough around. It was only a matter of time before someone dunked her. She would have loved to swim in the hole with the village kids her age.

“I just don’t like swimming that much,” Jess lied. “What are you driving at, Clair?”

“Just this: At a certain point, you should stand up for what you want. Take a risk. Go anyway.”

The idea made Jessica’s stomach turn over. “You mean, defy Marion outright?”

“Yes. At what age are you old enough to decide for yourself?”

Jessica was quiet. What Clair was suggesting was just not done in Dagevli families. Parents had ultimate authority until children were married off. Law and order in the home was the reason Dagevli was successful enough to win a festival. Did Jess have it in her to show such rebellion? How would Marion react if she did?

They reached the pushroom patch. The soft amber tops glowed in the dim light beneath the shade of the sheldies. Pushrooms were so called because as they grew, they traveled along the soil, pushing up tree droppings, needles and pebbles into little piles in front of their fat stems. Behind them they left little tails, like shooting stars. The girls knew to only harvest the pushrooms with tails longer than the length of their hand.

“Would you defy Hanna?” Jessica asked as the girls filled their baskets.

“Hanna isn’t Marion,” replied Clair. “My mother always explains why she disallows me to do things. Afterward, even if I don’t agree with it, at least I understand it. Marion is notoriously private. I mean, Hanna is her best friend, but Marion won’t even talk with her about her past, or why she came to Dagevli in the first place. She’s never told my mother anything about your father. I mean nothing, even though my parents were the first people to help Marion when she arrived here. They only want the best for you and your mother, and Marion knows that. It’s strange. It’s like…”

Jess straightened, dropping three pushrooms into her basket. “She doesn’t want to be known.”

“Exactly. But why? Some people are just private, and I respect that. But with Marion, it’s almost like she is ashamed of something.”

Jessica shot a startled look at Clair. Marion was a proud woman. She didn’t brag or swagger about town. She wasn’t like that. She was just confident, self-assured. She said things with authority and always held herself composed. It was one of the reasons Jessica was afraid to cross her mother; she instinctively felt that Marion knew so much more about the world than Jessica. No matter what, Marion always knew best.

“Maybe it’s me she’s ashamed of,” Jessica said, feeling Beazle squirm against her skull in reaction to Jess’s discomfort at the idea.

Clair scoffed and rolled her eyes. “That’s ridiculous. Why could she possibly be ashamed of you? You’re hard-working, obedient, kind. You have a green thumb unlike anyone I’ve ever met. I mean, squash is squash, it’s not that exciting, but you do grow the best-tasting gourds around. The village kids love you. Even the animals love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Enough already.” Jessica dimpled and tossed a pushroom at Clair’s head.

But Jess’s smile faded as she returned to snapping off pushrooms. Clair only knew that Marion was reserved about herself and her past. She didn’t know that Marion had made Jessica keep her half-fae identity and her familiars under wraps her whole life.

Marion’s simple explanation had always been that Greta and Beazle were small and vulnerable, that they might come to harm if the village kids knew about them, that they’d constantly badger Jessica to play with Greta and Beazle. And regarding Jess’s fae ears, they would draw attention that Marion didn’t want on herself or her daughter, because it just wasn’t anyone’s business. But Jess knew the children in Dagevli would never harm her familiars, so that justification was thin at best. And while fae were uncommon in small villages of Solana like Dagevli, they were commonplace in Solana City. Not only that, some flora fae were greatly valued by the crown. So what was Marion really trying to protect Jessica from? Was it really a matter of shame? And if so, why?

End of Excerpt. Preorder your copy of A Blossom at Midnight here.