In the Kingdom of Kaloma, women are forced to marry by the age of 26. It’s the law.
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About the Book
In the Shadow of a Wish
Fareview Fairy Tale Book One
by Maci Aurora
Published 26 April 2022
Mixed Plate Press
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Page Count: 518
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In the Kingdom of Kaloma, women are forced to marry by the age of 26. It’s the law.
In the remote village of Sevens, at the northernmost point of the kingdom, there lives an impoverished family with four daughters and a son. Without the means to make love matches, the daughters are trapped by their circumstances.
When one daughter discovers a golden key deep in the Whitling Woods, it may have the power to change everything…
Auri Fareview, practical and realistic, does what she can to serve her family. When she finds a golden key that could be the answer she needs to save her sisters from the unjust Kaloma Marriage Laws, she discovers the treasure might be more than she bargained for. Enchanted, it doesn’t just come with a price attached, it’s also home to an imprisoned god, who wreaks havoc on her body, her heart, and her soul. And those aren’t practical matters. He has the power to break her.
Nixus Uraiahs has lost track of how long he’s been imprisoned by the spell on the key. There have been six key-keepers, all of whom have failed to break the spell to free him, and Nix knows he’s the reason why they haven’t. So, he will hold this 7th key-keeper accountable to the bargain of the spell: three wishes and a price for each. There’s no hope in her freeing him, however. Nix knows she’ll be like all the key-keepers who came before her. Except Auri approaches her wishes differently than any of the others, and Nix begins to see her as more than just a key-keeper. She intrigues him, proving her strength, surprising him, and enchanting him. Though he’s entrapped by the enchantment placed on the key, Nix realizes his heart is at risk of being captured by the seventh key-keeper. That is a risk he can’t afford to take knowing his villainy is just a single wish away.
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Excerpt
“Auri Makes Her First Wish”
“I thought you might be happy that I’d settled on something, given how often you’ve asked about it.”
His eyes flashed to her, then away. This was how things had become between them: tense and terse. Though she couldn’t be sure, it seemed only days ago he’d admitted to wanting to have sex with her whenever they were in a room together, and now this was his response. The indifference stung, but Auri didn’t take the time to examine why.
Instead, she sighed and sat across from him in the chair she’d come to think of as hers.
“What is it?”
She wasn’t sure if he was commenting on the sigh or the wish, so she decided it was the wish. Besides, she didn’t want to comment on her sigh. “I have thought a lot about this wish and the wording because you said it matters.”
“It does.” His gaze was lost somewhere in the liquid of the drink, the look on his face dark like everything about him. From the dark clothing to his dark eyes to his dark hair and now the somber carriage of his mouth in conjunction to the loss of the camaraderie between them, his brooding was exactly how she might have once imagined the god of night and darkness.
Auri smoothed the front of her dress. “At first, it may seem like it doesn’t directly benefit me, but I assure you it does.”
He looked up at that with a frown. “That doesn’t sound promising.”
“It fits within the parameters.”
“Alright.” His gaze returned to the fire.
“I’ve told you about the marriage laws and how I have to go to the marketplace to be discovered by a prospective husband.” Auri plucked at a loose thread in the pocket of her dress, then reached into the pocket to grab the key.
Nix straightened in his chair, taking a sip of his drink, then looking at her over the rim of the glass.
She held up the key; the firelight flickered against the shining metal. Then she put it back into her pocket and looked at Nix, who was watching her. “I’ve been thinking about how unfair it is. The whole system is geared to favor a man. The man chooses a wife, and though there’s a provision that a woman must accept the man’s offer, a woman without means—like my sisters and me—are stuck. A man can even marry multiple women, and a woman has no say in that. My sisters and I faced that, well–” she paused and gripped her hands together– “the last one–” She stopped, not really wanting to think about Crossbie and what had happened, what could have happened, now understanding more clearly what occurred between men and women and what Crossbie’s intentions had been. She shuddered.
“What about the last one?”
Her gaze danced to Nix to find him studying her, his elbows on his knees, his drink forgotten in his hand with his attention fully on her.
She swallowed, abhorring the need to relive it, but felt it was only fair to explain so he understood. Needing to move, she stood and paced around the room as she told him about her experience at the marriage marketplace before finding the key. When she got to Crossbie grabbing her, replaying what he’d said, Nix stood up and walked to the fireplace, his back to her.
“One of those men. He was in the conjuring?” Nix asked.
“Yes. Crossbie. The first man.”
Nix’s eyes caught her and held. “He put his hands on you.”
She shuddered, recalling it, but didn’t respond to what he’d said unsure if it was a statement or a question. “So, you see,” Auri concluded, “our prospects are grim and gaunt. A woman has no rights over her–” Auri stopped rambling, her bravery seeming to break apart in her throat.
“Over what?” Nix asked. He looked over his shoulder at her, dark emotions riding his brow.
She swallowed to clear her throat, reassembled her bravery, and said, “Over her own body. Before coming here, before meeting you, before reading The Romance of Lady Miriam, which I would never have had access to read before coming here, I knew very little. I would have been imprisoned or put to death for trying to learn.”
Nix returned to his chair, where he sat and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees once again, one of his hands loosely holding the drink between them.
“Women have no choices.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I have no choice.”
He sat back as if she’d pushed him with her words, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of their fight or something else, but he looked down at his drink, and damn her if she didn’t notice the thickness of his lashes fanned out over his cheeks. When he looked up, he asked, “What is the wish?”
She recited the words in her head, the ones she’d decided on after determining the right way to word the wish for what she truly wanted. “I wish for women of my homeland, which includes me, to have the freedom to choose what they want for their bodies in all ways.”
He stood and walked a few steps away from her. Knowing him, he was trying to find the loopholes in her wording before granting the wish, and she knew he would help her. That is all he’d ever done. Then he sighed. “Auri… the consequence–” He looked pained. “Are you sure about this? Please be very sure.”
“I’m sure.”
About the Author
Romance author.
Lover of stories.
Maci Aurora has been writing stories since she was a child. When she was eleven, she fell in love with reading Sunfire Historical Romances about girls who made a difference in their lives and still fell in love. In high school, a friend introduced her to Lavyrle Spencer and Judith McNaught, and from there, her writing journey was cemented in telling stories about love. Having already published many novels (all of which are threaded with romance as upper YA and New Adult titles) under the pen name, CL Walters, Maci Aurora wanted to write stories that offered the same attention to story and characters but with additional steam.
Maci writes in Hawaiʻi where she lives with her husband, their children, and their fur-babies.
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