Snippet Sunday: March 20, 2016

Welcome to Snippet Sunday on Darkling Dreams!

Where writers come together to share a few sentences (8-10) of their current project — whether it’s a recently released novel, a WIP (work in progress), or an older manuscript that’s being revived. Intended to hook readers, gather feedback and build an author’s fan base, Snippet Sunday is the FB group that does all three.

Blessed Ostara, everyone! It’s finally SPRING!! Except winter is going out with a bang for me. Beautiful sixties and seventies weather the past couple weeks and now I’m back down in the thirties and forties. Go figure.

I am going to continue on with the first book in the Dark Heir Chronicles yet, Fated to Darkness yet. I’m just going to keep rolling with it up through April for Camp NaNo and then switch to something different in May. I know, that’s a lot of Fated to Darkness snippets, but this series is my baby.

Previously on Sunday Snippets: Four year old Heather had been kidnapped from her home by a woman clad in black and whisked off to another realm where she found her kidnapper wanted her to be her Heir. But not just any Heir. After being locked up and put through a ritual that has changed her and her life forever — though she does not yet know it — she has found herself in a small bare essential room with a tiny bathroom, and her new mentor has instructed her to clean herself up and be ready in ten minutes. Having talked of what Ciara finally wants of her, she has now gone through three trying lessons under her mentor’s thumb, and has since passed out.

Picking up right where I left off from last week’s snippet with Heather’s first real act of standing up this bitch, I mean witch. Ciara speaks first, and she is asking the question to Heather’s wish to go home.

(Some sentences may have been creatively edited and punctuated to try to fit the ten sentence limit. I’m over, again. Can we just agree that my snippets will always be a little longer but not too long?)

~*~*~*~

“Why?” she hissed.

Heather choked a little on the grip on her neck. Her small hands tried desperately to grab at Ciara and pry her fingers away but her grip was too strong, and Heather too weak to do that to someone so much bigger than her. Color rose to her face from the pressure on her airway, the long fingernails of Ciara’s digging painfully into her skin.

“Y-You mean,” she croaked out. “Y-You evil, like Disney bad guy! Mommy said never go with stranger. N-Never listen to stranger that mean or offer something, or want. They bad guys, like you!”

“And you think that I am a bad guy?”

She tried to nod but couldn’t manage it, instead choking again, still grappling at Ciara’s hand. “Act like bad guy.”

At that, Ciara actually smiled, something dark that nearly stopped Heather cold from defying anymore. It was a sadistic smile, awfully cold and proud of who they thought they were.

“There are many bad guys out there, Heir,” she whispered in a sinister way. “I am but one of them. You can’t avoid them all, you can’t defy them all. One will break you down, one will hold you captive, and one will turn you into someone else. Don’t hate the bad guy, Heir, not when it is who you will become.”

Heather’s eyes widened, horrified at that sentence. She didn’t want to be one of the bad guys. The bad guys were always defeated within the fairy tales. They were always alone and hurting, they always failed. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to hurt people.

“No!” she choked out. “I no bad guy!”

“You will be my Heir, and to be such, you must be cold hearted and evil just as I. A bad guy,” she sneered.

“I don’t want!”

“You will want!” Ciara snapped back. “You feel that thrum? That adrenaline-like rush? It’s powerful and it is part of who you are now. Dark, wicked, evil. Like I.”

“No! I be like daddy, not you!”

Her grip tightened on Heather’s neck even more, causing her to gag for air. Her dark green eyes flashed dangerously at the continuous refusal and she suddenly threw Heather to the ground, looming over her.

“Forget that life, witch. You are not a mortal anymore. There is no returning to anything you deemed mortal. You shall grow to one of my standards, not those of a pathetic fool crippled by too much weakness.”

Heather tilted her head up to look at her. Fear and also anger played across her eyes. That little spark of magic was riling up, and somehow she thought that was what was fueling her anger alone. It was an adrenaline rush, it was dark she could tell from the cold prickling that came along with it. It seemed to feed off her fear and want, turning it to fury. She had no idea how it was happening or what it was doing but she liked the anger better than the fear and she latched onto it.

“I want go home!” she yelled.

“To what?! A life that which you can no longer be a part of?”

“They still family!”

“Family is weakness! Caring is weakness! As is any sort of loyalty and pathetic gestures of love!” Her tone was filled with contempt and disgust at the thought of it all, sneering the word ‘love’ especially.

“Mommy always said love was strength!”

~*~*~*~

Things are really heating up between these two, but is it going to cost Heather?

This story is not yet on Wattpad because it is my baby that I hope to publish one day, and if no one will publish me, I am self publishing. But it’s also not on Wattpad because it’s in first draft phases yet. So there will be no “if you wish to read more…”

However! If you wish to read anything else that I do have finished, you can hop on over to  my profile on Wattpad and check out what I have to offer. I love to hear any and all feedback on my work as well. Comments are greatly appreciated, as are the reads.

And if you’re looking for some other great snippets of fellow authors,
hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!