White Heart of Justice
Noon Onyx
Book 3
Jill Archer
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Ace
Date of Publication: May 27, 2014
ISBN-10: 0425257177
ISBN-13: 978-0425257173
ASIN: B00EOARZP0
Number of pages: 304
Word Count: 95,000
Cover Artist: Jason Chan
Book Description:
Since Lucifer claimed victory at Armageddon, demons, angels, and humans have coexisted in uneasy harmony. Those with waning magic are trained to maintain peace and order. But hostilities are never far from erupting…
After years of denying her abilities, Noon Onyx, the first woman in history to wield waning magic, has embraced her power. She’s won the right to compete in the prestigious Laurel Crown Race—an event that will not only earn her the respect of her peers but also, if she wins, the right to control her future.
However, Noon’s task is nearly impossible: retrieve the White Heart of Justice, a mythical sword that disappeared hundreds of years ago. The sword is rumored to be hidden in a dangerous region of Halja that she is unlikely to return from. But Noon’s life isn’t the only thing hanging in the balance. The sword holds an awesome power that, in the wrong hands, could reboot the apocalypse—and Noon is the only one who can prevent Armageddon from starting again…
Excerpt
Prologue
I can’t be with
you anymore. That’s what she’d said. Six words that had become sixty then six
hundred then six thousand . . . sixty thousand . . . six million . . .
reverberating in his head, bouncing around inside his brain, driving him
absolutely mad. There were no other words. No other memories. Only that last
one of her. Standing at the edge of the oozy stew of the destroyed keep’s moat,
flanked by two Angels, one preternaturally beautiful, the other full of
purpose. The same purpose he’d had until those six words stripped him of it.
Flying out, he’d
barely cleared the wreckage of the keep. His heart beat against the walls of
his massive chest, and his monstrous wings beat against the infinite, empty
sky, but the beats were slow and grew slower still. Slower. Until finally . . .
Stop.
He made it
across the river and then dropped like a ten-ton stone, crashing into the
brush, breaking tree limbs and a wing. He lay there amongst the blackening
scrub refusing to shift back into human form.
Man’s thoughts
were unwelcome.
In time, the
rogares came. Water wraiths. He killed them all. And then sickened by the smell
of blood and meat he couldn’t—wouldn’t—consume, he left his nesting place. By
then, the wing had healed, but unnaturally, so that flying straight was
impossible. For days, he traveled in circles, never getting far. It wasn’t just
the wing. The yearning to return to her was nearly unbearable. The emptiness
inside of him an abyss.
Was she still in
the Shallows? If he could just . . .
But then he
remembered the Angels. And the look on her face when she’d said the six words.
And the feelings in her signature. She’d need more than mere weeks for them to
abate. She might need months. Hopefully, not years. Years meant nothing to him,
but they did to her. And then the reminder that her time was more precious than
his drove his yearning to a new level of ferocity. Ruthlessly, he tamped it
down. He realized then that it might be best to return to man’s thoughts. After
all, she was a woman.
And he wanted
her back.
Chapter 1
“Glashia calls
Noon the ballista.” Waldron Seknecus’ low voice rumbled through the Gridiron, a
deep, cavernous underground space used by the upper years at St. Lucifer’s for
sparring. “Because of how she fights now. Watch.”
He was speaking
to three other spectators: my father, Karanos Onyx, executive of the Demon
Council and the man who would ultimately employ all of the magic users who
trained here at St. Luck’s; Friedrich Vanderlin, an Archangel who was the dean
of Guardians over at the Joshua School, the Angel academy we shared a campus
with; and a woman who looked unsettlingly familiar to me, though I couldn’t
remember when we’d met or who she was. I cleared my mind and concentrated on my
opponent, Ludovicus Mischmetal, who preferred the moniker “Vicious” for short.
He was a second year Maegester-in-Training at Euryale University. We were
competing against one another in the New Babylon MIT rank matches, which St.
Luck’s was hosting this year.
All second-year
MITs were required to compete. The top-ranked MITs from each school would then
be eligible to compete in the Laurel Crown Race. The object of the race was to
bring back an assigned target. Targets were either rogare demons or priceless
artifacts that needed to be recovered. Participation in the Laurel Crown Race
was voluntary, but the MIT who returned to New Babylon with his (or in my case,
her) target before any of the others, won the coveted Laurel Crown. Winning the
Laurel Crown often set a future Maegester up for life because winners could
choose where they wanted to spend their fourth-semester residency. And ofttimes,
those residencies turned into permanent positions. Everyone else would receive
offers, but it would be the Council that decided which of those residency
positions they accepted.
Last semester,
we’d been given our first field assignment. It was an assignment that had been
full of rogare demon attacks and other lethal situations. That assignment had
lasted a mere three months and I’d barely survived it. My residency would last
for twice as long, so I was well aware of how important the residency venue would
be. Winning the right to choose where I spent next semester, not to mention who
I would be working for, would go far in preserving not just my happiness, but
also my life. The Maegester who was judging the match, a middle-aged man with
thinning, ginger-colored hair and a near permanent frown, called out for us to
begin.
I’d watched
Vicious spar with other MITs. He was smart. His infliction of pain would be
very calculated, very precise. There was nothing personal about his desire to
beat me. He just wanted to win the match so that he could retain his current
Primoris ranking at Euryale and compete for the Laurel Crown. Of course, I was
similarly motivated.
Vicious gave me
a curt bow, his long, black, razor-cut bangs briefly falling forward before he
shook them back and used his waning magic to fire up a weapon, a flaming
broadsword. It hissed and spit with fury in the damp air of the Gridiron as
Vicious raised it toward me in an opening invitation to spar.
As a sparring
partner, Vicious looked fairly intimidating. His front teeth were shiny,
silver, and sharply pointed (likely, his real ones had been knocked out in
fights) and he was much larger than me. He wore the usual black leather
training pants and vest, but he’d elected to go shirtless underneath the vest.
I guessed it was an intentional show of muscle, literally. He flexed his
forearms and grinned at me, his message clear: I might be a woman playing a
man’s game, but he wasn’t going to spare me any blows.
That suited me
fine. Sparing me blows wouldn’t win me the match.
About the Author:
Jill Archer writes dark, genre-bending fantasy from rural Maryland. Her novels include Dark Light of Day, Fiery Edge of Steel, and White Heart of Justice. She loves cats, coffee, books, movies, day tripping, and outdoor adventuring.
Website/blog: http://jillarcherauthor.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/archer_jill
Posts
