teaser tuesday

Still pretty burned about the novel from hell, so I'd like to post a teaser from a story that still excites me. This is part of the climax of my epic fantasy IRONBANE. Protagonist Anjen, better known as Ironbane, is a forty-something war criminal with a walking stick and a master plan.

(Here be violence and swearing.)

*

The Winter King stumbled toward her, still melting. It towered over her. "Sss." Snow steamed beneath its feet. Its white cloak smouldered, and curled up and blackened at the edges, and finally caught fire; the fire rose around it like a halo.

Anjen licked her lips. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth, her bruised mouth stung, but she dragged out words. "You forgot something."

"Sss!" the Winter King hissed, burning, and drew its sword of black ice. Around it the Court of Winter smouldered and burned and died.

"Go ahead," Anjen croaked, smiling more and more through the pain. "Kill me. If you can."

She found she didn't care all that much. She'd done her duty: she'd faced the Winter King and beaten it and kept her pride, for all that it tried to scare her and shame her into submission. Dying didn’t matter any more.

The Winter King took two lurching steps.

Anjen reached for something the Winterknight had discarded in its death throes. It was a stupid clumsy thing she normally had no need for, and yet when she curled her fingers round the hilt the iron weight of Valiant in her hands reassured her. Pain pulsed through her in time with her heartbeat. She stiffened her spine and forced herself to her feet, ignoring the creaking of her beaten body.

She braced her feet squarely in the snow. It would be over one way or another in a single exchange. If she moved, she'd fall. If she ran, she’d die. She had to stand and face it.

"What you forgot," Anjen told it, lifting Valiant's point, the distant starlight dancing pale on the iron blade, "is that I'm fucking Ironbane."

The Winter King staggered toward her on fire. Its burning cloak stuck to it and melted it. The flames curled around it brightly, making a second, hotter crown, and when it snarled the flames escaped from its open mouth and burst through its eye sockets.

It lifted the black sword high above its head.

Fuck that. Anjen jammed the point of Valiant up into its belly.

*

Other teasers: Karla, Lia, Raven, Lavender, Becca, Amna, Angie