Pippa Jay: Tuesday #Teaser - Strange Awakenings #scifi #romance #spaceopera

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Tuesday #Teaser - Strange Awakenings #scifi #romance #spaceopera

With Keir's Fall finally up for pre-order, I've decided to share a few exclusive snippets on my blog through December. Come back on Friday for the SFRB Showcase to see another one! For this excerpt, Quin and Keir are visiting her son on the tranquil world of Loganum. But the tranquility doesn't last long...

Keir woke in the night to find the bed empty and the doors to the balcony wide open, a strong, chill wind gusting into the room. Concerned, he rose and saw Quin standing outside in little more than a thin slip, arms clasped around her for either warmth or consolation. He took a blanket and went out, wrapping it around her protectively. With her hair blowing into his face as he cradled her, he rested his hands tentatively on her stomach, hoping to warm and comfort her.

“What are you doing?” he asked, worry tightening his throat so that his voice rasped. “It is freezing out here!”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said blankly, shivering. “I had a nightmare.”

He felt her quiver, her thoughts dark and frightened. “What was it?”

She leaned against him. Lights in the home opposite sparkled like stars set in tall burnished pillars. The sky above was cloudy, the last traces of sun turning the edges dull copper. The whole landscape looked like a bronze casting, delicately sculpted and laid against a background of watered silk.

“I couldn’t reach you. You were in a metal cage, locked away,” she said in a haunted voice.

He could see the image in her mind, feel her desperation and terror, the sense of hopelessness at her attempts to release him. He suffused her thoughts with silent reassurances and drew his arms tighter around her.

“But I am not caged,” he said, his voice soothing. “I am here, with you.”

Quin was crying now, shaking so badly he thought she might be ill. He turned her, wiping the tears from her face. Once before he had seen her like this, tormented by nightmares after she had told him of losing her daughter. Perhaps being pregnant had brought back those fears to haunt her.

“I couldn’t reach you!” she wailed. The anguish in her voice set his heart pounding. He held her as her trembling worsened.

No. It wasn’t Quin shaking. Everything was shaking. The whole balcony vibrated and a strange whine pervaded the air, hurting his ears. Dark, seething clouds surged into the gorge, obscuring the lights of the homes opposite, as something drove them into the gap. Strong winds blasted through the spires.

Blurb:

A seductive tyrant. A lost hero. And a galaxy about to fall...

It's been a year in paradise for Keir and Quin, but now the idyll is over. After Quin falls sick, they return to the hidden sanctuary of Lyagnius, and what she learns there will not only change their lives, but set them on a journey that could separate them forever.

When Keir falls victim to a ruthless Nercaandi Empress bent on conquering the galaxy with her cybernetic army, it will take all Quin's diminishing powers and the help of her son to find him. But what waits for her aboard the tyrant's ship will test her strength and the limits of their love, and put everything she cares about at risk. Including Keir.

With the galaxy itself about to fall, will she be able to save him?

Book Two of the Redemption series and part of the Travellers Universe.