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(Author's Note: this book is currently FREE if you are a member of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. We are hoping it will be free for everyone shortly, otherwise - it's only 99c!)
Eighteen year-old Daphne is a prisoner in the wintry confines of the Forbidden Forest serving Claudia, an evil witch. Daphne, has no memories of her past. She lives alone in a magical cabin entertained by shelves of fairy tales and fantasies of being rescued by a chivalrous prince. When handsome Zach Caldwell crashes headfirst into a tree, somehow breaching the powerful wards surrounding the Forest, Daphne has to decide where her loyalties lie—to Claudia, the only "mother" she's ever known or to the dashing stranger with ambiguous intent.
Excerpt:
DAPHNE KNEELS AT the base of the largest apple tree in the Forbidden Forest, rummaging beneath the frozen crust of snow for the Guardian's dagger. Her hands are raw, and her nose is starting to run. Weak afternoon sun reaches like fingers through gnarled branches. Despite the perpetual winter, glowing red apples dangle from the branches like globules of blood.
An airplane whines overhead. Wiping her nose with the back of a frozen hand, Daphne stops to watch its progress across the muted sky. She wonders if the pilot sees her solitary line of footprints carving a path in the snow. Or do the witch's wards hide this place, even from above?
"Get on with it, slowpoke," hisses Eugene. He can't quite help being sibilant as he is a six-foot long, Day-Glo orange and aqua, talking snake. He insists he was once a man, and though Daphne works for a powerful witch clan, she believes Eugene to be delusional. There is no magic that could imprison a man in a snake body. Granted she doesn't know much about the subject. Beyond the magic that manifests in her log cabin, Daphne cannot conjure a single spell herself. Still, she tries to humor him. It costs nothing to do so.
"I'm trying," Daphne insists. "Why don't you slither underneath the snow and help?"
"Are you serious? It's freezing in there."
She quirks a brow. "You're cold-blooded."
"You're not the first woman who's told me that."
"I'm not a ..." woman, Daphne was about to say, but she is a woman. She's used to thinking of herself as a girl, though the curves on her body certainly argue the contrary. Since the age of five, for thirteen years now, she's been Guardian of the Forbidden Forest, living alone with almost no one to talk to but a snake. Time marked by these monthly feedings and the harvest visits from her mistress, Claudia, High Priestess of the Malum Coven.
"Not a what?" asks Eugene.
"I mean, you're not a ..." Daphne chides herself for almost challenging Eugene on his fantasy of being a man. She has hundreds of her own fantasies she wouldn't want refuted.
Eugene flicks his forked tongue. "You are not anything but annoying. On with it now. There's a succulent jackrabbit about one-hundred yards from here on the menu. So hop to it."
Daphne hates when Eugene talks about his meals. "Jackrabbit? Thinking too big once again. Remember what happened last time? How long was that poor thing stuck in your, um, throat?" Daphne shudders at the memory. "And you really should stop with the bad jokes."
"A man's got to keep himself entertained somehow."
She smiles in spite of being half-frozen and anxious about the impending pain. "Ah, here it is."
Removing the golden dagger from the blanket of snow, Daphne grips the bone handle.
Author Bio
Debra Goelz is a refugee from Hollywood where she served for ten years as a financial executive for such companies as Universal Pictures, Dino de Laurentiis and Jim Henson Productions. Her performing career began and ended with her puppeteering a chicken during the closing scene in "Muppet Treasure Island." After garnering over 9 million on-line reads, her award-winning YA fantasy, "Mermaids and the Vampires Who Love Them," was published by Hachette audio in October of 2017. She lives in a redwood forest in rural Marin County with her husband. Her two children have abandoned her to seek a college education in New York.
