Sneak Peek Excerpt: Shadow Fox by Ashley J. Banard

Sneak Peek into Shadow Fox by Ashley J. Benard
Available at Champagne Books
Buy HERE at Champagne Books
Fantasy

Blurb:

Jared Bruin doesn’t know who he is. He remembers nothing of his early childhood before the age of seven when he was abandoned in a park in St. Louis, left in an unfamiliar world that terrified him. He knows only that he is driven to learn everything he can about swordplay and sixteenth-century combat.

 

Almost twenty years later, as he is battling a heroin addiction, suicidal tendencies and a violent affliction he doesn't understand, he is hired to teach swordplay to an enigmatic woman with secrets of her own, who somehow provides a link to his past.

 

Then a missing journal arrives that provides many answers to Jared’s past, and in it another world is revealed, one of a Goddess, prophecies, elves, a devastating love triangle, and a war in desperate need of a hero.


Excerpt:

Worried that he may have blown it, he paused outside the club, where it was much more quiet and the air was fresh, and offered her his hand. Under the outdoor lights, her eyes were an emerald green, offset beautifully by tanned skin and black hair.

“Do you mind if we start over?”

“Not at all,” she said and took his hand.

“Hullo. I’m Jared.”

“Glad to meet you. I’m Tarika.”

They shook hands, laughing, and she caught sight of the inside of his wrist. The remnant of his self-inflicted wound, though over a year old, still bore a raw and purplish countenance around the raised and striking white line of the scar, and there was absolutely no doubt as to the nature of it. His breath catching in his throat, he tried to pull his hand out of her grasp but her fingers tightened around his and refused to let go.

She pushed his sleeve up to his elbow to better inspect the scar, and with the fingers of her free hand, she traced the scar all the way up his forearm. The touch was so incredibly intimate that Jared felt as though she had undressed him.

“Why did you do this?” she said, her eyes riveted to the scar.

He tried once again to free his hand from her grasp but to no avail. “I…”

She looked up and met his gaze. Her eyes were glazed over. As many seconds of palpable silence passed, Jared tried several times to pull away from her.

Finally, she spoke, and her voice sounded distant and utterly different.  “You don’t know who you are.”

Jared froze. When she continued staring into his eyes, he, fearing there was more to come, resumed struggling, especially when she began to speak again.

“There is something inside you that…you are hiding from yourself and others…something you find terrible--”

Politeness be damned, he started to yank his hand out of hers, only to have her fingers tighten so forcefully he started to squirm. A distant voice in his head, oblivious to the circumstances, said, Those are a fencer’s hands, no doubt about it.

“You’re afraid of it, you don’t understand it, you fear it will consume you--”

Using his free hand as leverage, he finally managed to jerk his hand from her steely grip and put both hands on her shoulders, shaking her, furious.

“Stop!”

She blinked several times and stared at him, and his anger melted at he realized she had no control over what just happened. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “I didn’t mean to do that. I am so sorry.”

He sighed, feeling exhausted and even sober. “Do you always begin acquaintances this way?”

Check out Ashley's website for more news, books and other fun stuff HERE