Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Spark is light, Spark is magic, Spark is power. Spark is everything and it blooms inside the bodies of Tau City’s young women. Once a decade, in exchange for enough power to keep the city modern and comfortable, a Spark Maiden must be sacrificed to their mysterious tower god in a ritual called The Extraction.
Ten Maidens are Chosen, but only one enters the tower as a sacrifice, never to be seen again. The nine leftovers are elevated to celebrity status and spend the next decade living in the luxurious Maiden Tower, wearing couture gala gowns, and partying with the city’s most interesting and beautiful people. Every young woman in Tau City wants to be a Spark Maiden because the odds have always been in their favor.
Until now.
One by one, the greedy god has summoned the leftover Spark Maidens into sacrifice. When Clara Birch, Spark Maiden number nine, gets the call, she fully expects her fiancé, Finn Scott, the Extraction Master’s son, to save her.
Spoiler alert: He’s not going to.
At the same time, a rebellion is brewing. The forgotten underclass is plotting the end of the god and his tower with strategically-placed Rebel spies that will bring it all down. Jasina Bell is a young woman on a mission to make history and she will stop at nothing to get the fame she deserves.
When Clara is forced into the tower against her will, she makes an unexpected discovery. There is no god—just a man, one willing to do what Finn Scott wouldn’t: save Clara Birch.
Even if it means destroying the entire world to do so.
Betrayal and sacrifice, loyalty and power plays—four people are entangled across time and space as they seek truth, freedom, and true love in this spicy and twisted adult romantasy that will have readers breathlessly turning pages until the very last word.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
“We all know the victor takes the spoils. And in this case, it’s the villain who writes the history books. Make no mistake, the Godslayer will continue to be humanity’s biggest threat until he is stopped. In the meantime, we must purge these romantic ideas of his sinister quest while we still can. If truth matters at all, we cannot—we must not—let these animals have their way with it. Especially if it’s a child’s picture book. The fragile, malleable little minds of children everywhere are being warped by the images portrayed on the pages of this atrocity. Burn it. Burn every copy. Ban it. Never let it see the light of day again.”
—Leena Peel, Editor-in-Chief, Tau City Metro News
CHAPTER ONE
Spark leaks out of my fingertips as cyan-blue light when I stroke the curve of Finn Scott’s muscled shoulder. It leaves a trace of glow on his skin that takes many more seconds to disappear today than it did ten years ago. We’re in his quarters—in his bed, specifically—hiding from the festival going on outside.
Not really hiding, I guess. What we just did wasn’t wrong and if anyone saw us come in here—or sees us leave—they wouldn’t even blink.
Clara Birch and Finn Scott have been a ‘thing’ for… well, our entire lives. Which totals up to nearly three decades.
But I’m a Spark Maiden and he’s the Extraction Master’s son and I technically still have three months left in service to the tower god before Finn and I can officially and publicly declare our love.
Right now, in bed next to me, he is absently tracing a fingertip up and down my outer thigh. And this simple touch of his is enough to send a chill up my whole body.
“Clara?”
“Hmm.” I sigh the word out with eyes closed, picturing our future.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I wish we could stay like this forever.”
Now I smile and turn, pressing my face into his neck. “Pretty soon we’re gonna be spending so much time together, you’re gonna get sick of me.”
He chuckles and I hear this happiness as a rumble coming from his chest.
In just three months we will be this close to each other every night. We will make love, and wake up together, and breakfast, and he will go to work as his father’s new apprentice, and I will have babies and turn his quarters into our home.
This new life will be the complete opposite of how I have lived for the past ten years, up on the ninth floor of the Maiden Tower, surrounded by luxury. A celebrity, of sorts.
“We should get going.” Finn’s other hand, the one not caressing my thigh, is busy playing with my hair as he says this.
I moan and turn a little so we’re facing each other. Our mutual smiles are genuine. “Not yet.” This comes out a little bit whiny, but I feel I have earned this tiny objection.
“They’re gonna start missing you.” He’s pulling strands of hair away from my face now. We kiss, letting it linger, well aware that we need to get back to the Choosing Festival outside, but unwilling to break apart.
I sigh, knowing he’s right, but reluctant to give up this time with him. So I stall with more words. “Trust me. I’m not missed. They’re busy with the Little Sisters today. I’m old news now.”
Finn chuckles. “Not exactly. I mean, seven, Clara. It’s… precariously close, don’t you think?”
“Wow.” I sit up a little, blinking at his audacity. Because that was not just impolite, but actually rude. “Well, that’s certainly one way to pull me out of my postcoital bliss. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry.” He offers me a weak smile, then pushes a few errant strands of long, blonde hair away from my face. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“That’s not why you said that. And I’m mad that you’re worrying about it. There are only three months left, I’m number nine, and the last call was over a year ago now. Whatever crisis the god was having that required so many Spark Maidens, I think it’s been remedied.”
Finn sighs, not quite agreeing, but not willing to say it out loud, either. He’s worried and he wants me to allay his feelings, but he’s looking for something more than what I just gave him. What I just said is the same thing everyone says.
But the truth is, no one knows what’s going on with the god in the tower. What we do know is that seven Spark Maidens in ten years is too many.
The Extraction is a tradition here in Tau City. But it’s more than that. Spark is what the god uses to power the city. Every ten years the Extraction Master ranks the most powerful Spark Maidens in order from one to ten. And on Extraction Day itself, the god calls number one into the tower to take as his own.