Meet Alstera in *Dream a Deadly Dream*

 Alstera, the Fae Mark'd Wizard, exiled for her crimes by the Wizard Enclave.

She's ventured into Vaermonde, one of the countries that bans all wielders of powers ... and she discovers Cherai, the fugitive comtesse, pretending to be a bard.

And Alstera senses the sticky sorcery comes from Cherai.

Excerpt ~ 

Alstera awoke. For the first few breaths, she couldn’t divine what had roused her, then she recognized the sticky track of poisoned power.

She shoved away her cloak. Cold dispelled the warmth, bringing her starkly awake and aware. Twisted power snaked through the night, and she didn’t need to touch Cherai to know the power had snared her.

With wizard-sight she saw the sweat beaded on Cherai’s face. She writhed beneath her blanket and whimpered like a forsaken child. Tears mixed with her sweat, but the spell didn’t cause physical pain. Emotional pain was pain enough. A sorcered spell warped her dreams. And she suffered.

When Cherai cried out, Alstera reached to break the entangling sleep-snare. Then she retreated. Her binding her taught her caution. With sorcery surging around the bard, Alstera had better be cautious. But Cherai writhed, caught in some horrific nightmare.

A sleep-spell would unravel at a set pace. As long as Cherai followed the assigned steps, she would find her way back. Any interference would confuse the pattern, and she might be lost.

That’s what Alstera told herself. But then she worried: What if it were not a simple sleep-spell? What if

it were a sleep-snare that would trap Cherai in the nightmare until she slept her way into a painful death.

How to know the difference? If I had any one of my powers—. That was a futile wish. She was bound. Only drips and drops of her power seeped through the bindings. She could only watch and wait.

Cherai twisted onto her back. Her hands reached, reached. She cried out again. Alstera watched from the edge of the camp, paced around, watched again. When Cherai cried out a fourth time, when her breathing sounded shocky and hard, she cast aside caution. She had a little hoarded power. If the dream turned into a sleep-snare, she had the pendant that Great-Uncle Rombrey had given her, infused each day of her journey with more hoarded power.

She knelt beside the bard. The sorcery bit her, icy and venomous, trying to repel her. Alstera reached for power. It came then stuttered to a stop, only droplets leaking past the binding. Pale energy, blue and silver, limned her hands. Water colors, freedom, like memories, clear but re-shaping, running like Time, as unstoppable as Time. And this was the binding her own brother had inked into her skin. Free an innocent and live, he had chanted, words that writhed in her soul, for one of her forbidden spells had chained Gage to her. Gage, who had loved her, and who died because her spell imprisoned him.

Justice, she supposed, that the tenet of freedom, Water, might be the first penance she would serve. Then she touched Cherai’s temple, to see into the dream. The blue of Water slicked her fingertips, and she sank into the nightmare. Vivid images flashed through Cherai’s mind, quick and piercing, painfully bright, painfully real.

She snatched her hand back, severing the dream connection. A sleep-spell but with elements of a snare and sticky with sorcery. The evil was deep, well-formed, dangerous. Breaking the spell wouldn’t be easy. Waking her would be easy—until the sorcerer built another trap into his spell. And Alstera had little power to use against a sorcerer. Ending the spell tonight would not be difficult. Setting up wards until she could defeat the sleep-spell, that would be tricky.

And the dream still trapped Cherai in its pattern.

 

Fetch your copy of the epic dark fantasy Dream a Deadly Dream here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077CTRD9V