The Adorned
Authors: John Tristan
The Adorned
By John Tristan
My name is Etan, and I am Adorned.
A living piece of art, I exist to please the divine rulers of Kered. With nowhere to turn after my father died, I tried my luck in the capital city. Little did I know how quickly I would be robbed, beaten and forced to sell myself into servitude. But I was lucky enough to gain the attention of Roberd Tallisk, an irascible but intriguing tattoo artist who offered to mark me with enchanted ink for the enjoyment of the nobles. I was given a chance to better my station in life, and I could not refuse.
But the divine rulers want not only the art but the body that bears it. In their company I can rise above the dregs of society and experience a life most only dream of, at the cost of suffering their every desire as a pawn in games of lavish intrigue. Their attention is flattering, but I find I’d rather have Tallisk’s.
Caught between factions, I learn that a revolution is brewing, one that could ruin Kered—and Roberd and myself along with it...
101,000 words
Dear Reader,
I feel as though every month I start my letter the same, gushing over our month of releases and telling you how amazing and fantastic they are. This month, I’m going to change things up and start by telling you that they’re all quite awful. Okay, not really. Poor authors, I wonder how many of them reading this just had a mini heart attack? Of course you should be excited about this lineup of releases, because it’s another wonderful and diverse month.
In the new-and-unique category, this month we have our first ever decide-your-own-erotic-adventure. Christine d’Abo’s
Choose Your Shot
is an interactive erotic adventure that not only lets the reader choose who the heroine ends up with, but what kinky fun the characters get up to along the way.
We’re thrilled to welcome Karina Cooper to Carina Press. She’s moving her steampunk series, The St. Croix Chronicles, to Carina Press—starting with a prequel novella,
The Mysterious Case of Mr.
Strangeway
, in which a young Cherry St. Croix takes on her first bounty, only to find her efforts challenged by a collector whose motives run deeper than a hefty purse. Look for book three in The St. Croix Chronicles,
Corroded
, releasing in September 2013.
We have a strong lineup of contemporary romances this month. Fiona Lowe returns with her next Wedding Fever book,
Picture Perfect Wedding.
Tamara Morgan brings us
The Derby Girl
, in which a roller-derby girl lives up to her “bad girl” image to woo an unattainable plastic surgeon, only to discover that he’s the one man trained to see past the surface. In the humorous contemporary romance category, Stacy Gail’s
Ugly Ducklings Finish First
will be a hit with fans of high-school reunion romances, and with those who like their romance on the more lighthearted side.
I’m also thrilled to welcome
three
debut authors to Carina Press this month, all with contemporary romances. In Kelsey Browning’s
Personal Assets
, book one of the Texas Nights series, a recovering good girl needs the right man to help her find her inner bad girl—which is easier said than done in a small Texas town. Next, when the bank refuses Emma the loan she needs to save her family home, she must turn to her neighbor Mitch McKenna, a sexy real-estate investor whose reputation she’s spent the past six months pulverizing into sand, in
Unexpectedly You
by Lily Santana. And last, but certainly not least,
Knowing the Score
by Kat Latham features a smokin’ hot rugby player with a scandalous past who gives up his vow of celibacy to help a virgin overcome her fear of intimacy. Three debut authors offer up three terrific contemporary romance novels—make sure to give them each a try!
This month we also have three fantastic male/male romances. Kim Knox kicks off a fun-filled science-fiction historical trilogy. As described by the author,
Agamemnon Frost and the House of Death
is
Sherlock Holmes
meets
The Scarlet Pimpernel.
With aliens. Check out further Agamemnon Frost stories in September and October 2013.
John Tristan joins Carina Press with his male/male fantasy romance,
The Adorned.
A beautiful young man indentures himself to a tattooist and becomes a living canvas for the artist and his inhuman patrons. And for those who like their male/male romance in the contemporary genre, Libby Drew’s
Bending the Iron
is sure to hit the mark as she builds a brand for emotional, wonderful male/male romance.
Following book one of her Magick Trilogy,
Magick by Moonrise
, Laura Navarre takes us back into her historical paranormal world. When the Angel of Death falls in love with life, will a secret Tudor princess pay the ultimate price? Tudor England and the celestial realm collide in
Midsummer Magick.
Last,
Love Letters Volume 4:
Travel to Temptation
continues the collection of
A
to
Z
erotic short-story romances penned by Ginny Glass, Christina Thacher, Emily Cale and Maggie Wells. Volumes 1 through 3 are now available. Look for volumes 5 and 6,
Exposed
and
Cowboy’s Command
, on sale in September and October 2013.
As always, we have a significant backlist of books that I hope you’ll browse and take a look at, in genres from horror to mystery to fantasy to female/female and across the ranges of romance. There’s an adventure waiting for every reader!
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to
[email protected]
. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
Contents
Chapter One
After the burial, they came to my father’s house to empty it.
The last of his money had been used to buy the heavy stone that marked his grave, a jutting tooth of grey Gaelta slate. Now to settle his debts, they came for the books, the disused instruments, the tapestries. It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t nearly enough. When he’d died, they had come to explain the extent of his debts, dressed respectfully in mourning colors. He had levied the house against his borrowing. Out of compassion, they explained, they would let me remain there until after he had been laid to rest.
I watched them from my chair by the fireplace. The last fire was dwindling there, coals white with ash; the cold winter air was creeping in through the chimney. This time, they had brought strong men from the village with them. The men grumbled and sweated as they stripped the house bare, room by room; they had taken my bed, I saw, and the cabinet where I had kept my few things. Those were beside me in a rucksack, and next to the rucksack was the old brass clock, still well polished, still ticking like a small heart.
It was nearly nightfall when they’d finished and the two men from the bank came to see me, shuffling up to my fireside seat. They must have told me their names, but I’d forgotten them. The eldest, whose careful moustache was touched with bristly white hairs, held a ledger in his gloved hands. “Etan Dairan?” he asked, tongue stumbling slightly over my name.
I looked up at him. “You know who I am.”
“By law we must ask. We will need your mark,” he said.
“For what?”
“To show you were present at the proceedings and all was handled properly.” He smiled, his moustache parting like a curtain to show his small, even teeth. “It was handled properly, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say it was handled properly,” his companion said.
I blinked at them. They gazed down at me with small matching smiles. “Yes,” I said at last. “May I see the papers?”
“You can
read?
”
I nodded and held out my hands. The older man opened his ledger, not giving it over from his grip. I saw an account in a crabbed hand of each thing taken from us, with its rough value tallied in a column beside it, and some hasty lines assuring the reader all was done in full accord with the law.
I read it slowly, making sure. They watched me read. Until then, I think, they had not believed I could.
The younger man tapped his foot in rhythm with the clock. “That is fine workmanship.”
“It is not my father’s,” I said hastily. “It is an heirloom from my mother’s family. There should have been papers.”
“Ah, yes.” The elder produced a worn letter that had been tucked in the back of the ledger. “I’d almost forgotten.” He proffered it to me, smiling, like a man giving a gift.
I took it and held it in my hand; the paper was so old it felt like silk.
“Can you sign?”
There was nothing I could object to, but our quills and ink had been taken away. They had me sign with a stub of pencil wrapped in leather, retrieved from behind the younger man’s ear. The elder looked over my signature, nodded, and closed the ledger with a sound like a cracking branch.
They had taken the lamps. They had been old, those lamps, my father’s pride, some with leaded glass of river-blue. He’d composed by that light, with watery shadows cast on his bent back, alternating between the ink-spattered desk and the harp stool. Now the twilight sky and the sputtering fire cast the only light remaining. The tick of the clock was suddenly very loud.
“I am sorry,” the older man said, “but you must go now.”
I stood up and shouldered my rucksack. It wasn’t heavy. I wound down the clock and took it carefully under my arm. The older man was gone already, out of the gloomy house, but the younger had lingered.