Spotlight & Giveaway: Felyn’s Curse by Nancy Holland

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Nancy Holland to HJ!

Hi Nancy and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Felyn’s Curse!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Felyn’s Curse is a marriage of inconvenience story. To seal a pact between their peoples, Varz agrees to take Felyn as his woman in name only. But their fragile union faces two major obstacles — another woman is carrying Varz’s child, and Felyn is under a potentially fatal curse. As they meet these challenges together, they also learn to love each other. In the end, only because of her curse can Felyn save Varz from the worst kind of treachery.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

The first full moon of the warm time hung low in the sky. A few birds, eager for day, twittered in the trees. Early night-blooming flowers reluctantly began to fold their treasures.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I wrote most of this book in one week. I told my family they were on their own, shut myself in my study, and wrote all day every day. Exhausting and exhilarating!
• Felyn’s Curse placed second in the New England Chapter of RWA’s First Kiss contest. When you read Chapter Five, you’ll see why.
• My stories usually start with a plot, then I develop the characters. Felyn’s Curse started with the scene that became the prologue to the book. Then I found my characters based on that, and the plot came last. It’s the only book I’ve put together backwards (to me).

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

Varz was a hard character for me to create. He had to be a valiant warrior and a strong leader (think Jason Momoa) but he also couldn’t overshadow Thalgor, hero of the first book of the Witch King trilogy (think a very tan, bulked up Chris Hemsworth). That problem turned out to be the key to Varz’s character — his lack of confidence in his own abilities. How Felyn helps him believe in himself became a central part of their story.

Felyn surprised me by being a much better caretaker for Varz’s daughter than her sister Erwyn had been for her. I realized after a while that she must have learned how to nurture from the older women who had taken her under their wings when Erwyn couldn’t.
 

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

In addition to a warm glow from the happily ever after, I would like to give readers a sense of the power that comes when we accept our strengths and acknowledge what we have achieved, the way Varz does. I guess I want it to be a kind of anti-imposter-syndrome story.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

Right now I’m working on revisions for the final book in the Witch Kind trilogy, but a contemporary story, The Christmas Pony (December 2019) will probably come out next, also by Tule Publishing.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Tule tote, copy of ebook Felyn’s Curse and Tule swag

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Excerpt from Felyn’s Curse:

“This sacrifice is not necessary,” Erwyn said in a solemn voice as she adjusted Felyn’s gown yet again.
Erwyn’s braided hair was as long and dark as her younger sister’s, with only a hint of gray, her body as slim despite four children, her blue eyes those of a girl. Only her hands showed her age, and her wisdom.
“Yes, it is.” Felyn wanted to slap the hands away, as if to stop her sister’s fussing would also stop the trembling she fought to hide.
“We all know how devoted you are to Thalgor,” Tya, the woman of Thalgor’s brother Rygar, said from the bench where she nursed her youngest.
The precious, and slightly spoiled, little boy had been a late blessing when her other children were all but grown, as Felyn had been for her mother.
“That is not the reason I agreed,” Felyn sighed as she slipped out of Erwyn’s reach. “Or not the only reason.”
“What?” Erwyn was suddenly still.
“This morning, just before I woke, the Witch King—”
“You saw the Witch King?” her sister breathed.

Felyn shook her head. “No one has seen him since the day Thalgor’s life was saved. But he spoke to me.”
“What did he say?” Tya asked, obviously in awe, as she lifted her sated child to her shoulder. She pushed her golden braid aside and absently patted the infant’s back.
Felyn looked around, fearing she might be overheard through the thin walls of the tent. For so long she lived in tents, but now they were all used to the solid rock and wood and clay of houses, and the privacy they gave. But everyone else was already in the center of the circle of tents, waiting for them. Only guards stood outside the tent. Guards with their minds more on the glare of the afternoon sun in their eyes and getting home to their women than on the words of the three women inside the tent.
“He said I knew what I must do,” Felyn confided in a whisper.
All the tension melted from her sister’s body. “Then it will be all right, despite. . .”
The sisters exchanged a look.
“This man pledged not to touch you, did he not?” Tya asked, misinterpreting their concern. “And you are a witch. Even Thalgor could not take Erwyn against her will.”
“This man is not Thalgor,” Erwyn said in a cool voice. “But he wants this alliance even more than Thalgor does, and he will keep his word.”

“Even if Felyn wants him to touch her?” Tya’s tone was teasing as she set the child in her ample lap and rearranged the folds of her gown to cover herself.
The sisters exchanged another look, but before either knew how to respond, the child emitted a monstrous burp and all three women fell into laughter.
“Which is why I must miss the ceremony,” Tya sighed as she stroked the child’s head. “It is too solemn for this one.”
Erwyn started to reach for Felyn’s gown again, then stopped and lifted her head. “Thalgor.”
Felyn smiled at the obvious distress on the great man’s face as he stepped into the tent. His hair shaded to white around his face, fine lines circled his brown eyes and firm mouth, and age had shaved his muscular frame from massive to merely powerful, but he could still silence a challenge with a single look.
Even if she did not pledge herself as a child to become a Sea Witch, she feared that any man who might love her would shrivel in the shadow of this wise warrior who loved her sister.
“You do not have to do this, Felyn,” he said earnestly after nodding a greeting to Erwyn and Tya. “It is a bad idea. I never should have promised. . . You’ve never even seen the man!”
“It would make no difference. This is how his people seal alliances,” Felyn reminded him. “Are not a permanent peace and an end to the trade in slaves worth such a small sacrifice?”

“Small?” Thalgor roared in a voice that would strike fear in any not used to him. “To become the woman of a stranger?”
“Not truly his woman.”
Thalgor sighed. “He is as adamant about that as I.”
A flicker of pain stirred Felyn’s heart. Why should a stranger’s distaste hurt so? Perhaps because it mirrored the reaction of every man who might have considered making her his.
“And,” Thalgor added as he raised a hand tenderly to her cheek, “he is a man of great honor. A man almost worthy of you, little sister.”
She smiled in spite of herself.
“He knows that I am cursed?” she asked Thalgor yet again.
“He knows as much as I.” Thalgor looked at Erwyn, then back at Felyn. Neither met his eye. “I would not deceive him. That may be why he is eager not to touch you. But I think not. . .”
Erwyn put her hand on his arm, and he at once turned his attention to her.
“The Witch King spoke to Felyn,” she said softly. “He gave her his blessing.”
Thalgor relaxed as Erwyn had. “Oh.”
He put his hand on Erwyn’s, then delivered the message he undoubtedly meant to bring in the first place. “All is ready.”

Erwyn freed her hand and started once more pulling at Felyn’s gown. She readjusted the strap across her sister’s chest that held her bag of herbs and potions, then the one that held the empty sheath at Felyn’s hip, waiting for the knife her new man would give her as his pledge.
“Enough,” Felyn said finally.
Her sister looked at her, blue eyes wet with emotion. “I will miss you so.”
“A year or two. Until all the bands accept the alliance and end the trade in slaves. And in the next warm time we meet here again. You can bring all the children. I will miss them.” Felyn pulled a breath past the pain in her throat. “Almost as much as I will miss you, sister.”
Tya sniffled in the still tent.
“Are you certain?” Thalgor asked for the last time, his eyes as damp as the women’s.
“Yes, Brother. It is my fate.”
He bowed his head in surrender. “Let us go.”
He took Erwyn’s hand and stepped from the tent. As Felyn followed them, heart pounding, she wondered why the Witch King’s blessing felt like a second curse.

Varz paced the small space of the tent, each breath pushed past the tightness in his chest.
“How much of a monster do you think the witch you take as yours will prove to be?” Cestor asked with an insolent smile.

“It is not she I think of.”
“You still have time to change your mind. Thalgor does not seem a man to hold you to such a promise.”
“Our people will, if he is to be our ally. It is our way.”
His second smirked. “So being leader has become a burden after all.”
“It is always a burden.”
“A burden you grasped before my father was even dead.” Cestor was coldly serious now.
Varz rubbed his hand wearily across his face. “Had he lived, I would have been as glad as any to see him leader again.”
“Our witch says you used your witch blood to block her magic when she went to heal him,” Cestor said with feigned indifference.
“Apar feared your mother’s anger and now yours. She could not heal a man whose brain was dead.”
Varz was both ashamed and gratified when the younger man recoiled from his words.
But Cestor recovered quickly. “Apar says you used your witch blood to guide the enemy arrow through his eye and into his brain.”
Varz sighed. “She says a great many things, all of them meant to make you her confederate.”

“And what lies will this other witch you take as your woman tell you?”
Should he have told Cestor even that she was a witch? Varz wondered, glad he confided no more.
“Enough,” he said. “This is an old argument, in any case.”
“Oh, but you’ve stopped the blasted pacing.”
Cestor gave an oily laugh. Before Varz could take more than a single step toward him, he heard Thalgor call his name from outside the door of the tent.
“I don’t think the back of the tent is guarded,” Cestor offered with another smirk when Varz’s eyes darted around the small space despite his best efforts to be calm.
But escape was not an option. He already gave his word. A leader’s word, his honor, was more than a man’s. So, as leader, he would take this woman no other man wanted, no matter what a monster she might be.
And, as a man, he would be grateful to his death for the pledge not to touch her that Thalgor, for reasons of his own, demanded. If she were beautiful, such a pledge might have been his doom, in spite of everything.

The small cluster of tents was carefully arranged in the mountain valley between Thalgor’s bands to the north and the southern bands—Thalgor’s tents on one side, his own opposite Varz’s, the tents of Varz’s men completing the circle. Beyond that oxen waited to carry the tents and women back to their own lands, grazing on grass so new it shone gold green.
Varz’s men were fewer, but heavily armed. Felyn waited in the center of the circle for Varz to come from his tent. She faced Thalgor and Erwyn, not even tempted to slide a glance at the tent to her right.
Behind Thalgor stood his lieutenants. Sett, older and grayer than Thalgor, with his woman’s two oldest sons on each side of him, led the northern village. Tynor, leader of the village to the east, stood with his woman, who held a young boy, the only child of a second love late in life. Thalgor’s brother Rygar, who led the western village, was alone, his woman Tya still in Thalgor’s tent. Beloved friends. Men who sacrificed much to end the warfare between the bands and build villages to end their wandering. Men whose efforts would be more lasting, perhaps invincible, when this alliance with Varz and the bands he led was sworn.
An almost invisible movement of Rygar’s head told her when Varz emerged from his tent. Still she did not look, but her mind filled with a horror she realized only now.
This man was from the band that captured her father, was perhaps even the son of the one who turned him from a great leader to the mad, empty shell of a man who killed her mother.
Felyn looked at Erwyn and they shared the thought. Even Thalgor, with witch blood enough to feel his woman’s stronger emotions, went white with unexpected rage.

“Would you be blamed for your father’s crime?” came a familiar voice in her head.
She had been blamed, once. The Witch King knew that, perhaps better than any other. But he also knew it as the one appeal certain to keep her from fleeing her fate.
Finally she turned to look at Varz.
Her stomach felt as if it was torn from her body and thrown high over the tent behind Thalgor. She never thought about what the man himself might look like, never imagined. . .
He was not quite as tall as Thalgor, but broader in the chest and shoulders than her sister’s man ever was. His powerful arms seemed somehow bare without a sword in one hand, a shield in the other. He was dark, darker even than she, with his long black hair braided and thrown forward over his shoulder incongruously like a woman’s, in the way of his people. His raven-wing brows sheltered ice-blue eyes that glittered with some kind of barely suppressed emotion she could not read.
Witch blood! She quickly sealed her thoughts against him. He blinked twice and grimaced, as if embarrassed she caught him intruding into her mind. But she hadn’t felt him there, as she should have. Only his eyes, now melted to sapphire, gave him away.

Her throat tightened at this unexpected danger. Why did Thalgor not tell her? Or did he not know? Could this man shelter his thoughts, his ancestry, even from witch blood as strong as Thalgor’s? Felyn shuddered at what that might mean.
When Varz took the two steps that brought him to her side, he did not shrivel or shrink in Thalgor’s shadow, as she’d feared any man might. Instead, he seemed to emit his own power, his own light. Thalgor’s did not dim so much as move slightly aside.
Why did no one tell her how beautiful this man was?

Why did no one tell me how beautiful she was? Varz forced his eyes away from the woman beside him and toward Thalgor, the man who entrusted her to him.
But Varz’s mind still reeled with the sight of her. Not so tall as her sister and slender, but with a promise of strength in the proud way she stood. A delicate face with black hair that flowed even longer than his own. And eyes like the green light of a forest glade at noon.
Eyes that widened with a pleasing admiration when she saw him. Perhaps she expected a monster, too. More likely, she never thought about how a man looked. A witch, and a cursed one at that, would have few suitors, no matter how lovely she was. A witch already pledged to become a Sea Witch. Her curse, her pledge, suited his needs well enough, he reminded himself.

He felt the cold shadow of Cestor behind him. Felt the woman beside him draw away. An ally against the enemy in his own council? That suited him well, too.
But he would still rather she was closer to the monster Cestor taunted him with.

Felyn felt more than saw the stranger from the forest come to stand behind Varz.
Was this why a man such as Varz had agreed to take a woman he could not touch?
Her whole being recoiled from what was now the obvious answer to her question. Not because she found it unthinkable for Varz to have a man lover, but because she found it unthinkable Thalgor would trust anyone so blind as to love such a man as the stranger who wanted to kill her.
Then she remembered Batte, once Thalgor’s lieutenant, and Dara, the vile woman he loved. Saw in her mind the woman’s mutilated body when Batte brought her home after a panther killed her. Felt in her blood the bone-deep horror it brought her.
She shivered and before she could stop herself took half a step away from Varz. From the memory of that moment. From the threat that stood behind them.

Should she call a halt to the ceremony? She looked at Erwyn’s face, calm and certain. Thalgor’s was the same. Their trust in the Witch King’s blessing shone in the smiles they bestowed on the couple before them.
The sheath on her hip would hold the knife that could provide an answer if all else failed. She had thought of such an end enough, especially when the curse first showed itself, when she first awoke sick in body and mind from the blood, raw meat, fur or feathers in her belly, the remembered cries of her helpless prey.
Later she sought another whose teeth and claws would be large enough, jaws strong enough to free her from. . . everything. But the others avoided her, with her human scent and eyes that knew too much for what she appeared to be.
Then her nephew, Erwyn and Thalgor’s oldest, made her see how little a curse mattered when one was loved. And she accepted her curse as she helped him accept what he saw as his.
She knew now how to live with her curse, but she also knew that to kill it with her, would be no tragedy. That would have to be her comfort in the days ahead, slim though it might be.
Thalgor was speaking, had been speaking for a while now, saying the words she heard him explain in council when his lieutenants agreed to this alliance.
“To make war no longer, to take no more slaves, nor allow others to transport them across our lands. . .”

When he finished he held out his empty hand, as did each of the others there—Rygar, Sett, and Tynor, then Varz and his lieutenants and, more slowly, the man behind him.
“Done.” Varz’s voice cut through Felyn’s wandering mind like a sword through water.
Then the others lowered their hands, leaving only Varz’s.
Thalgor turned his eyes to Felyn. Helpless against her promise to the man who was brother, father, and friend, she lifted her hand and allowed him to place it in the hand of the handsome stranger beside her.
The contact between them burned, seared her flesh and his so surely she wondered whose magic did it. And yet nothing changed.
Varz loosened his hold slightly, experimentally, and she found she could breathe again.
“Will you take our sister Felyn as your woman to bind this promise?” Thalgor asked in the words used by Varz’s people.
“Yes.” Again his voice cut through her thoughts so only the sound existed for her.
“Man-to-woman, mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart?”
No one noticed, or no one murmured at the words omitted, “body-to-body, blood-to-blood.”
“Yes.”
Did anyone else notice the other words missing, the ones their people used, “only this woman?”

Thalgor turned to her, eyes misty again with emotion.
“Do you agree to be this man’s woman, woman-to-man, mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart?”
“Yes.” The strength of her own voice surprised her.
Then Varz turned toward her and recited the words of his people, holding out a knife, hilt toward her, with his free hand. “This knife is my pledge. As long as you wear it, you are my woman.”
“And I will not touch you.” The words echoed unbidden in her mind. Witch blood!
“I accept this knife as your pledge,” she replied.
She managed to take the knife without touching him. It felt warm, almost alive in her hand. She slid it, a little awkwardly, with her left hand into the sheath on her left hip.
“Done,” Thalgor pronounced.
Everything around them erupted in sound, in music, laughter, and joyful talk.
In the midst of all the celebration she and Varz stood silent, immobile, both staring at their joined hands as if in shock. Or as if reluctant to let go. She wasn’t certain which. But for a reason she could not have explained, she felt happy.

What have I done? Varz stared at the dainty hand in his.

He knew the answer well enough. Had thought about it long and hard before agreeing to it. But now it was real. He had taken a cursed witch as his woman. A woman he could not touch.
A woman he did not want to touch.
A woman the only man who ever earned his full respect entrusted to him. A woman who would have refused him if he were as honest with his new allies as they were with him.
A woman who even now stared at their joined hands with what he was sure was a stunned regret that mirrored his own.

Felyn didn’t know how long they might have stood there like that if Rygar did not come up to them and, with a nod to Varz, take her by the elbows and dance her away.
The music was unfamiliar. One of Varz’s men played the pipes, one of Thaglor’s the drum. But she knew the steps as her dearest friend led her around the circle while the other men from both bands laughed and clapped.
When the music changed to a slower beat, they stopped at one side of the camp, near Rygar’s tent, breathing heavily.
“I could not bear to see you looking so solemn on such a day,” Rygar said quietly.
She looked up and brushed her sleeve at the silent tears that wet his face.

“Are you certain?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Why does everyone ask me that, as if I were a child with no mind of my own?”
“Because we love you.”
She hugged him close, not certain he would not be the one she would miss the most. He and their common nephew who was so much like him.
“Write a song about this day and the peace it brings, poet,” she told him as she reluctantly stepped away. “I will want to hear it when we meet again in the next warm time.”
He cupped her face in his hands and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.
“I am a leader now, not a poet, little sister.”
“You are a poet who also leads.”
Suddenly he dropped his hands to her shoulders and gently turned her around.
Varz stood watching them, his face dark. Why had she not sensed that he was there?
Varz nodded at Rygar in dismissal, but her friend stayed.
Varz’s face grew darker. “You are very friendly with this lieutenant of Thalgor’s,” he said to Felyn.

She flushed, recognizing too late how her actions must look to a man who now had the right to consider her his and, more importantly, to the men he led. Old habits made her ignore the simple explanation as she looked for words of apology.
“We only danced,” Rygar said quietly.
But Varz clearly wanted words from her.
As his woman, she owed him a truth she would not share with others, no matter how things were between the two of them otherwise.
“He is Thalgor’s brother,” she told Varz, “and so mine.”
She could feel Rygar’s approval as his hands fell from her shoulders and he stepped back.
But Varz took a long look at her friend’s face before finally taking Felyn’s hand in his and leading her back to the center of the circle. At his gesture, the piper changed to another dancing tune and Varz swirled her around as Rygar had.
Yet the feelings coursing through her were completely different. She learned the unfamiliar steps of the dance easily. It was the man himself who changed everything. The almost mindless pleasure she took in dancing with Rygar became a strange awareness of how alive her body was under Varz’s stern gaze.
The tension in his arms even as he danced smoothly to the beat spoke of an anger she could not understand. She felt as if he would have rather done anything than dance with her, touch her, yet felt compelled to do so all the same, not just by the expectations of his men, but by some deep inner need.

Would she ever come to know this man and be his friend as she was Rygar’s?

Now Vars understood.
She had a lover. An older man with a woman and children he would not leave. So an arrangement such as theirs suited her needs as much as it did his own. Strange that he did not see it sooner, it was so obvious. As obvious as it should have been that she would be no monster.
Her lover was not Thalgor’s lieutenant, of course. It would be someone who lived in her village, someone less close to Thalgor, who undoubtedly knew nothing of it.
Thalgor was a man of honor. He probably believed that tale about pledging herself to be a Sea Witch. Perhaps even the curse was a lie, an excuse to sneak out at night to meet her lover.
A strange rage filled Varz. At being deceived. He held her elbows more tightly, swirled her around more fiercely, but the rage only grew.
Finally, she could not keep pace and lost her balance. He let go rather than fall on top of her soft, slender body, and she tumbled to the ground. Half the men in the circle jumped to help her, but Varz shook his head and bent over her himself.
Was it shame he felt when he saw the dirt that marred her gown, the awkward way she landed on her hand?

The music hesitated when Felyn stumbled, but then started again at a slower pace. Varz helped her to stand and clumsily brushed at her soiled skirt.
“Are you hurt?” he managed, with surprising effort.
“No.” No thanks to you, her look seemed to add.
A great buzzing filled his head, then took sonorous shape and escaped his mouth in unfamiliar and unwanted words. “I am sorry.”
Was that his mother’s voice he heard echoed in his own?
Felyn blinked at him twice in surprise, her green eyes with their slitted centers so like a cat’s he took a step back.
But before she could say anything, Thalgor’s woman, Erwyn, swooped down on them with the woman he thought belonged to Rygar, who held a small child on her hip.
“Are you all right?” Erwyn inspected Felyn’s wrist.
They all ignored Varz completely.
“I am fine,” Felyn assured them, but the two older women managed to whisk her away to Thalgor’s tent.
For some reason Varz felt alone with her gone.

“What happened?” Tya asked as Erwyn felt Felyn’s hand to see if she as injured.

“What do you mean?” Felyn replied, wincing when Erwyn found a small bruise.
“Your new man seemed to want to dance you to death.”
Erwyn released her hand. “Was he angry that you danced first with Rygar?”
Felyn shook her head. “I don’t know why he was upset.”
The two older women looked at each other over her head.
“Under normal circumstances. . .” Erwyn cleared her throat. “One might suspect Varz was jealous.”
“But that can’t be. He doesn’t want me,” Felyn pointed out, not looking at her.
Tya settled on a bench with her sleeping baby. “Want you or not, he has you.”
“He wanted to dance with me. We danced. I did not know the steps. I fell. That’s all that happened.”
“I should have considered this possibility,” Erwyn said.
A flood of emotions and possibilities raced through Felyn’s heart, each less pleasant than the last. Everything that was once so clear now felt dark and twisted. She put her hands over her ears, as much to silence her own thoughts as the words of the others.
“You see what isn’t there,” she told them.
Her sister looked pointedly at the hands that covered her ears. Feeling foolish, she lowered them, but kept her head high.

“Why did no one tell me he has witch blood?” she asked.
“I did not know,” Erwyn answered, frowning.
“Think, Sister. How could you not know?”
“His mother was a witch,” Erwyn breathed.
“And I’ll wager his father’s mother as well. I can no more get into his mind than you into Thalgor’s, if he doesn’t wish me to, but he can sense my thoughts unless I keep them from him. Is it possible Thalgor knew of this danger?”
“No. Absolutely not. He would have told me.”
“Is this so important?” Tya asked.
“It makes it hard for Felyn to keep any secrets from him, should he wish to know them.”
“Why would she keep secrets from her man? Oh. The nature of her curse.”
“Not even Thaglor knows that,” Erwyn reminded Tya.
“So we have two problems Thalgor did not expect.”
“Two?” Felyn resisted the urge to cover her ears again.
She already knew the answer. And shuddered at the thought.
“Varz has witch blood,” Tya replied patiently. “And he is attracted to you.”
Felyn shook her head in instant denial.
“You are a beautiful woman,” Erwyn said thoughtfully, “but he was so willing not to touch you that I assumed. . .”

“You were right, I think,” Felyn interrupted. “Did you not notice the young man who stood behind him?”
“The second who kept casting you looks even darker than Varz’s?” Tya asked with a small laugh.
Erwyn thought a moment, then shook her head. “I do not see it. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you wish to see it, Felyn,” Tya suggested gently.
“Stop it!”
She put her hands over her ears again, but Erwyn pulled them away and held them in hers.
“As a child, you would not speak. Now you will not hear. You need to do both, Sister. So much depends on this alliance, you must be prepared for whatever comes, whether it is what was expected or not. You agreed to this arrangement. You must make sure it succeeds.”
Felyn hung her head. If she told them of her attraction to Varz, the bond that already seemed to tie her to him, perhaps they would see why it was so important that he not be attracted to her in return.
But if she did, it would become their burden, too, increase Erwyn and Tya’s worry, Thalgor and Rygar’s regret. She did not wish to tax those she loved with all she felt. Like her curse, it was hers to live with, hers to endure.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Can love and sacrifice conquer a curse?

When Felyn was a young, defenseless witch, she was cursed to live as a shape shifter—a deadly panther. She might have been rescued and raised by a noble and powerful leader, but she lives in fear she will hurt those she loves in her animal form so each full moon she hides deep in the forest. But how can she refuse her adoptive father’s plea for an arranged marriage with a new ally? After all, it’s temporary and in name only…

Varz agrees to an arranged marriage reluctantly because he needs the military and diplomatic alliance. He has secrets and a growing power struggle back home. He’s relieved he need only marry the young witch for a year until he meets his bride. Felyn is beautiful and intelligent and not easy to ignore, but Varz is a man of his word. His vow to leave his bride untouched will be the hardest one he has had to keep.

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Meet the Author:

Nancy Holland recently began to live her dream as a full-time writer. After being a finalist in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart© contest and publishing two short contemporary romances, she is thrilled to return to her first love and write fantasy novels for Tule Publishing.

Despite dark pasts, heart-breaking betrayal, and a future that is always at risk, her fantasy heroes and heroines accomplish amazing feats of valor and magic to create a better world for everyone. More importantly, her characters refuse to give up on themselves, struggle to improve their lives, and learn to trust each other.

After years spent studying and writing about words written long ago and far away, she loves to travel with her husband to explore the cities where she can feel the lived experience behind the words.
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