Title: Darkling
Series: Port Lewis Witches, book one
Author: Brooklyn Ray
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: January 8, 2018
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 33200
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, paranormal, trans, magic users, bonded, demons, friends to lovers
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Synopsis
Port Lewis, a coastal town perched on
the Washington cliffs, is surrounded by dense woods, and is home to quaint
coffee shops, a movie theater, a few bars, two churches, the local college, and
witches, of course.
Ryder is a witch with two secrets—one
about his blood and the other about his heart. Keeping the secrets hasn’t been
a problem, until a tarot reading with his best friend, Liam Montgomery, who
happens to be one of his secrets, starts a chain of events that can’t be
undone.
Dark magic runs through Ryder’s veins.
The cards have prophesized a magical catastrophe that could shake the
foundation of Ryder’s life, and a vicious partnership with the one person he
doesn’t want to risk.
Magic and secrets both come at a cost,
and Ryder must figure out what he’s willing to pay to become who he truly is.
Excerpt
Darkling
Brooklyn Ray © 2017
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Ryder flipped over the first card.
The Magician.
He flipped over the second card.
The Tower.
Liam watched him carefully. His hands
were folded together, chin perched atop them like he might be praying. He
tipped his head toward the cards on the table, gaze resting on the vibrant curved
arcs of The Magician, a shadowy figure holding a scepter, his shape accented by
a billowing red cloak. The card was faded and the edges torn, a testament to
how often it’d been drawn.
How often Ryder had drawn it.
“So?” Liam prompted. His clear brown
eyes flicked to Ryder.
“Nothing new,” Ryder said. It was the
truth and it wasn’t. Ryder had pulled The Magician many, many times, but he’d
never pulled it alongside The Tower.
Liam tilted his head and strands of
chestnut hair fell over his brow. He sat back and pushed it out of his face,
scrubbing a hand on the freshly shaved side of his head. They’d been friends
for too long for Ryder not to know that gesture. It was frustration, the quiet,
mellow kind that Liam had mastered over the last twenty-two years.
“That—” Liam pointed to The Tower “—is
new.”
Ryder rolled his eyes. “C’mon then,
Princess. It’s your deck, what does it mean?”
“Don’t call me that,” Liam snapped. He
narrowed his eyes. Ryder heard the click-clack of his tongue ring bounce across
his teeth, another Liam mannerism he’d become accustomed to since he joined the
circle two years before. This one was a louder kind of frustration, a
haughtier, angrier kind. “The Magician is a card of intellect. Yours is
inverted, meaning you’ll be making an illogical decision soon. A…” He sighed
through his nose and struggled to find the word. “A partnership, maybe, through
magic. The Magician channels through his own body, meaning ownership of
oneself. But it’s inverted, so you’ll be giving something away soon.”
Ryder licked his lips. Ownership of his
body had been a struggle since he was a child, and he wasn’t looking forward to
giving any part of it away.
Liam glanced at him. “The Tower is a
card of sudden change. Chaos, even. This—” He tapped The Tower. “—with that—”
He tapped The Magician. “—is a witch’s worst nightmare.”
“It doesn’t sound that bad,” Ryder said.
“I’ll be having a sudden magical change soon. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Liam said. He lifted his
brows and slid the two cards off the table to shuffle them back into his deck.
“If that’s how you want to look at it, that’s how it’ll be.”
“Let’s see what the cards have in store
for you, Liam Montgomery,” Ryder said.
Liam’s eyes settled on him for a moment
too long. Ryder’s gaze darted away, over the sharp edge of Liam’s cheekbone,
the line of his jaw and slope of his nose. Sometimes Ryder wondered if Liam did
it on purpose, if he tilted his head the way he did to catch Ryder’s attention,
if he breathed the way he did, or smelled the way he did, or walked the way he
did to distract Ryder from everything and everyone else.
“Where’s your deck?” Liam’s tongue
clicked against the back of his teeth again.
Ryder huffed an annoyed sigh,
embarrassed he’d been caught looking. “In my jacket behind you.”
Liam handed Ryder his jacket. The deck
was in a maroon felt bag, tied shut with delicate matching strings. Ryder
pulled the cards out, their black backs a stark contrast to his pale skin, and
shuffled them. Magic stirred and hummed. It looped through his knuckles,
invisible, thrumming heat, and Ryder imagined it sinking into every card. He
thought of Liam, who sat across from him, watching intently. He imagined Liam’s
mouth and the line of his broad shoulders, how his jeans hung low on his
waist—stop. Ryder closed his eyes and redirected his thoughts to Liam’s magic,
the strong course of Water inside him, waves breaking and the sound of a river
flowing over rocks.
There. Ryder swallowed hard and handed
Liam the deck. “Shuffle then draw two cards.”
Liam drew his cards and laid them on the
table.
Something wicked lingered in the space
between them. The air pulled away from whatever it was, as if the elements knew
something the two boys didn’t. It crept under Ryder’s skin, nibbling at the
darkness he’d kept at bay for years. It was getting harder and harder to
control, and whatever this was, it wanted Ryder’s twisted, unnatural magic to
make an appearance.
Ryder focused on the Fire inside him
instead and nodded to Liam. “Go ahead.”
Liam flipped over the first card.
The Devil.
He flipped over the second card.
The Lovers.
Liam’s breath hitched. He stared at the
table, arms flexed and trembling beneath a tight-fitted black sweater. Heat
darkened his cheeks and turned his tan skin the same color as Ryder’s maroon
deck-pouch.
“Fatality,” Liam whispered.
“To ravage,” Ryder corrected gently. “To
undergo extraordinary efforts. Don’t immediately jump to the cards worst
meaning, Liam.”
“And—” Liam flicked his wrist toward The
Lovers. “—I’m about to make a fool of myself, apparently. Right?”
“It’s not inverted, so no. You’re going
to go through something dark and difficult.” Ryder tapped The Devil. “And it
will either push you toward a new love, or it will be because of a new love.
The Lovers can mean anything, you know that. It could be a partnership, a
romance, a fucking…” Ryder shrugged and sighed. “A meaningless hookup.”
“You know it never means that.”
“Okay, but it could,” Ryder hissed.
“I’m about to do something terrible with
someone,” Liam said. He looked at Ryder and shook his head. “Keep this between
us?”
Ryder cocked his head. Liam never wanted
to keep things from the others.
“Tyler will worry, so will Christy and
Donovan.” Liam sighed. His bottom lip was white under the weight of his teeth.
“Please?”
“You’ve never been one to break circle
pacts,” Ryder said.
Liam’s lips thinned. “I haven’t, but you
have.”
Ryder narrowed his eyes.
“Ryder.” Liam breathed his name,
pleading in a way Ryder hadn’t heard before. Apologetic, almost.
He tilted his head and dragged his gaze
from Liam’s pinched mouth to his feet. “Begging looks good on you.”
“Are you done?” Liam’s cheeks flushed
darker. “Yes or no?”
“Fine,” Ryder said. His lips curved into
a sly smile. “I’ll keep your dirty secret.”
Liam didn’t thank him. He shifted his
gaze toward the candles on the other end of the coffee table and they went out,
fizzling as if they’d been drowned. He sighed and pushed the two cards toward
Ryder.
“Put them away. We’re meeting everyone
in a half hour.” Liam’s bare feet on the worn wood floors in Ryder’s lackluster
apartment was a familiar sound. He brushed past one of the many plants Ryder
had littered throughout the living room, in baskets on top of the bookshelf on
the far wall, in planters beside the entertainment stand, lined up in small
pots on the kitchen counter. “Can I get a light?”
Liam plucked a bundle of sage out of a
mason jar next to the sink. He walked back over and stood in front of Ryder,
still seated on an ottoman in front of the coffee table. Liam held the charred
end of the sage in front of Ryder’s mouth.
“Can you?” Ryder teased.
Liam rolled his eyes. “May I, English
major.”
Ryder reached for the Fire buried deep
in his veins, opened his mouth, and blew gently across the sage.
It lit.
“Whatever showed up to watch my reading,
I want it gone,” Liam said. Smoke drifted into the corners, over the table, all
around. The window next to the front door was closed and the blinds were
cinched shut, causing the tangy smell of it to fill the air. “Something about
it wasn’t right.”
Ryder nodded. No, something about it
wasn’t right. But he couldn’t say that, because Ryder shouldn’t have been able
to sense it. That was Liam’s reading. Those were Liam’s cards.
Only people affected by the reading
should’ve been able to feel what Liam felt.
But Ryder had sensed the wickedness.
He’d felt its eyes on them, lurking above and around them, like a wraith with a
crystal ball looking at their future before they’d lived it. Their future. He
stood, turning from Liam to conceal the surprise on his face. Understanding
slithered restlessly in his chest. He wrenched the blinds up and opened the
window, shooing whatever strange entity hovered in the apartment out with the
smoke.
Whatever it was, it had tethered them. Chills
scaled Ryder’s arms.
The Magician. The Tower. The Devil. The
Lovers.
A magical catastrophe brought about by a
dark, vicious partnership.
Liam was probably right. They shouldn’t
tell the others.
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Meet the Author
Brooklyn Ray is a tea connoisseur and an occult junkie. She writes queer speculative fiction layered with magic, rituals and found families.Twitter | Tumblr
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