Entranced (Prince of the Doomed City, #1)

by Sylvia Mercedes

I’ve learned over the years that a smile is a much more effective mask than a non-expression. Every non-expression is ultimately a blank canvas inviting unwanted feelings to flash into momentary visibility. But if you’re wearing a smile, it’s easier to hide that which you would prefer to remain secret.

“Because I needed to show them all—my father, Estrilde, even that pasty-faced Lord Ivor—that you don’t belong here. You belong in Vespre. With me. Where you can be of great service to all Eledria.”

“I’ll make you pay for what you’ve done, Clara Darling,” he whispers. “I’ll make you pay tenfold for the evil you’ve wrought upon the worlds.”

“I’ll let the Prince take you below when he’s ready. That’s a place you’re better off seeing for the first time with him at your side.”

Deciding not to borrow trouble from the future when the present is plenty complicated as it is, I face the Prince again.

What you read is not a traditional spell the way you’ve been brought up to think of spells. The magic lies in the writer’s ability to make his prose implant in his reader’s brain. There it becomes something real. It’s that interaction of the two—writer and reader—that gives the magic its opportunity to rise.

“Because, Clara Darling,” he says, breathing the words out like poison, “you are a Noswraith-maker. From your mind was born a darkness so terrible, so profound, it could wipe out half a kingdom in a single hour if left unbound.”

“You killed the only person who ever loved me. You killed her. You are responsible. Because of what you carry inside you.”

“Dasyra.” The name falls from her lips, heavy as a stone. “Queen Dasyra of Aurelis. His mother.”