Title: The Rise of the Queen
Author: Aoife Marie Sheridan
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy/Romance
Hosted by: Ultimate Fantasy Book Tours
Blurb:
FROM AWARD WINNING AUTHOR AOIFE MARIE SHERIDAN
The final Instalment of the Saskia Trilogy.
Sarajane struggles with her separation from Tristan as she moves towards the heart of Saskia to defeat Lucian. But her journey isn’t easy. She encounters The Forsaken, zombies and fights to recover her true form. But with Marcus beside her and the help of Willow she makes her journey to her final destination but nothing is as it seems.
Verona and Mirium try to understand why their visions are gone, what Prudentia is up to? and find Sarajane. All the while Tristan and Verona are at war with each other, and politics makes each decision difficult with Morrick.
Loved one’s will be lost, Decisions will be final, and all betrayals will rise to the surface.
Step into Saskia for the last time.
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About the Author:
Aoife Marie Sheridan has loved reading from a very young age, starting off with mills and boon books given to by her grandmother. Her love for romances grew, by the age of 14 she had read hundreds of them.
Aoife has a passion for writing poetry or in her eyes her journal entries. It was something she did throughout her teens and into her twenties. Aoife won first place for two of her poems and had them published at a young age of just nineteen.
Aoife’s first book Eden Forest (Part one of the Saskia Trilogy) took first place with Writers Got Talent 2013. Aoife continues to write tales of fantasy and romance.
To find out more about Aoife Marie Sheridan you can visit her at:
Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00B5W8SK6
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Aoifemariesheri
Website: www.aoifemariesheridan.com
or email her at aoifesheridan101@gmail.com
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Chapter ~ 1 ~ Verona
The room felt bitterly cold from my earlier absence; I lighted the two candles that sat on a small wooden table beside the unlit fire. The armchair creaked under my weight. My eyelids fluttered feeling too heavy to keep open. Too many vision had plagued me lately, every one of them the same, always the same. I let out a heavy sigh. A smile tugged on my lips.
Mirium.
He would light the fire.
The door opened and I looked up at Mirium as he rubbed his hands together, already making his way to the fireplace. Too pampered, I had always teased him, but that tonight I would be glad of his want for heat, for I felt the cold myself.
“Verona, you will catch your death of cold one day.”
A laugh escaped my lips. “Oh brother just light the fire. I am too tired to fight.”
He looked at me with concern, but shook his head and continued to stack small sticks into the fireplace before lighting them. I drifted off into a light sleep, still aware of the movements around me. I could hear the noise of water. The rattle of mugs. He must have been brewing some sort of concoction, but there was none that stopped the visions. At least the brew would warm me.
“Drink Sister of mine.” He said the words so gently.
I took the cup and smiled at Mirium’s loving face. It wasn’t often we could be like that, so unguarded, so relaxed, allowing us to be just a brother and sister, to act naturally, instead of always being under the watchful eye of someone who would use us against each other. Our distance with each other was the only way to keep us safe.
“Tell me about the visions, are they still the same?” Mirium sat down, while leaning his staff against the corner of the red bricked fireplace. The fireplace was done in a beautiful arch, the craftsmanship remarkable.
“I don’t recall the first one, but I know I have been having the same vision from when I was a child. I see her so clearly, long, dark, curly hair flowing on a light breeze. Her eyes are an unnatural grey, but a grey I have seen before.” I take a long look at Mirium and the eyes I speak of. A sadness fell upon him, but I continued. “She was really beautiful. I always remember being awed by her beauty, thinking she couldn’t be real, but she was. She was very real, and more enchanting in person.” I shake my head pushing away the picture that played out so clearly in front of me; we all know the end. Sipping my brew stops me from talking.
“You have known for so long,” Mirium said while looking at me with pity, understanding the path that had been laid out before me. I didn’t want to do it, but that was the way of the world. I had no choice.
“I told you not to get too close, Mirium. You should have listened to me.” I didn’t say it with anger, as I was too tired for that, just pity at the understanding of what my brother may have to lose.
A heavy silence fell upon us. I didn’t want it to be like that, as our reunion should have been full of chatter. Since I arrived to Hummus it had been all business. With the war against the exiles and banishing Suraga, we hadn’t had time to just be brother and sister, but instead we now sit in silence. I didn’t want silence, but I had nothing to fill in the gaps.
“It is God’s will,” Mirium said, and he seemed lost in thought for a few more moments. “I don’t feel her. Do you?” he asked not in alarm just more mild curiosity. Mirium could always seem to feel Sarajane. I think it was her life force he felt but I couldn’t. I wasn’t as gifted as Mirium and he knew it.
“I’m not like you brother as well you know, so don’t jest me with such questions.” A niggling feeling ran across me, like hundreds of spiders racing across my bare flesh at once.
“What’s wrong?” Mirium asked.Now fear filled his voice, and I knew he sensed it too. I was unsure what, but something very bad had just happened.
Mirium grabbed his staff while I tied my long red cloak around my shoulders it would be no match for the weather that had started to rage outside, but I just knew that we needed to move, and fast.
The wind outside whipped at us likes an angry circus entertainer, but we moved fast against its onslaught. The streets were now deserted, people still in mourning or celebrating our small victory against the exiles; it was a small victory compared to what we must face and that was Lucian, a dark fallen angel who Sarajane must banish to the underworld.
The fires from the dead were nearly out. Red embers danced with the wind swirling them around in fast moving spheres. I turned in a full circle, the sensation was gone, leaving me feeling only the cold. But something had happened.
“Let me go and check on Sarajane. You go back to the cottage,” Mirium said, his brow creased. He left not waiting for a reply from me. His love for Sarajane was becoming too much. He would lose her, he needed to understand that. He would be the one that would hurt the most in the end.
Mirium was Sarajane’s grandfather. He had missed the first twenty one years of her life as she was brought up in the mortal world with no knowledge of Saskia. But the time had come for her to take her rightful place and go up against Lucian. It was a huge task to ask of anyone, especially from someone who came from a world where magic and angels didn’t exist. I let out a heavy sigh so much weighted upon her final decision in the future. It was life or death. All I could do was hope that my hands wouldn’t bring death to the saviour of Saskia.
I moved towards the cottage, turning my back on the dead and that horrible feeling raced across my skin again. I turned, but no one was in sight. Moving slowly towards the fires that lay just outside Humus’s fallen walls, I searched the perimeter. I couldn’t see much as the darkness was heavy and lay thickly on the ground. Squinting out into the darkness, I was sure something moved. I stood and waited, watching. There it was again.
How long I waited for Mirium, I wasn’t sure, but I rubbed my freezing hands together never taking my eyes off the spot where something lay. I had made that much out so far but what it was, I couldn’t see from that distance.
“I can’t find her, or Tristan for that matter.” Mirium said. I smiled against the bitter cold.
“Their young,” I said, already knowing I was wrong and just wishing I was right.
“Something’s out there.” I pointed and Mirium followed my finger. He too squinted and then he moved towards it with certainty. I followed quickly on his heels. The darkness seemed to consume us, its black blanket swallowing us up the deeper we went. I shivered against the cold and the unpleasant feeling that clung to me. Mirium had reached the area where the movements where. I came up right behind him. “What is it?” I asked, trying to see over his shoulder. When he turned around I could see what he was looking at. My breath hitched. Tristan was crumbled on the ground; a large pool of blood ran from underneath him. The source of the wound came from an arrow protruding out of his side.
“Is he dead?” I asked as I reached to check the pulse in his neck. It was fading.
“He will be soon if we don’t get him out of here,” Mirium said with grief all over his face.
“Sarajane?” I questioned, afraid of the answer.
Mirium shook his head, the grief too much. “I don’t know, Verona. I don’t know.”
I patted my brother on the back, hoping the small gesture would comfort him before we both lifted Tristan and carried him back inside the fallen walls of Humus.
Author Aoife Marie Sheridan 