During the Reign of the First Sea King
Hero or monster?
If She Remains Faithful, She’ll Be the Queen the Mer Have Been Waiting For
That’s the prophecy that has dictated every aspect of Taryn’s life. Born of two Awakened, both of whom are on the run from the wicked Sea King, she doesn’t dare to use her magic often lest the king ever growing in power senses her…and realizes that her very being is illegal. She is an unregistered Awakened who has been living for the last decade on a small islet, when even life beneath the domes of the mer proved too dangerous for her.
Her father, Brayden, has formed a band of revolutionaries whose goal is to win independence for the mer. A noble goal, but their violence isn’t the way she’d choose to win that freedom. And she knows it isn’t the way the Triada wants them to go about it either.
Taryn has remained faithful to the Triada…but her many decades of running from the Sea King are about to come to an end.
Taryn of the House of Byrne
She may just be the second-most powerful Awakened on land or under the sea…
Taryn has spent most of her 83 years in solitude, with only the Triada for company. She has learned to hear his voice, to practice her magic while being careful not to touch the sea that the evil king controls. And she yearns for a world where her people, the mer, can live freely. A world where they can rule themselves and not be subject to the whims of the tyrannical king. How, though, can she convince her two warrior parents that there should be a peaceful way forward?
He gave up his very identity to shape a better world.
Once, the world was a cruel place, struggling to emerge from the darkness the Great Cataclysm had plunged humanity into. So much had been lost, and no one knew that better than Alaric. Born of a trafficked mer mother and a gangster father, Alaric had no life to speak of before the Awakening Blade touched his finger…and changed not only his life, but the world.
Alaric, the Sea King
When he first wrestled the sea enough to allow the mer to build their domes, when he controlled the tempestuous tides and brought clean water forth again for land-dwellers, the people were happy to crown him king. He gave up his very name when he took the throne, swearing he would be nothing but their servant. The Sea King.
As the centuries have passed, though, Alaric continued to fall prey to his own weaknesses, and the deep faith in the Triada that once underscored his every move has turned into a chafing, a constant reminder of his every failure. For five centuries, he has ruled. But it seems the people don’t remember all he did to create the strong kingdom they now enjoy.
All they remember are his sins.
Tyrant. Monster. Heartless.
This is what they call them now. So this is what he’ll be.
Brayden, of the House of Byrne
Norinne, wife of Brayden
Brayden, once tutored by the Sea King himself when he was Awakened to great magic, is now the leader of a group of revolutionaries dubbed the Black Tails by the mer…and the Death Demons by the unfortunate land-dwellers who get in his way.
Norinne was once a Guardian to the Sea King, but she faked her own death and went into hiding in the Sunken Cities to escape him. She married Brayden when the priests urged her to, for the sole purpose of creating a powerful child.
Taryn, who is everything they could have asked for.
Norinne is aging now, which means her days are numbered. But Brayden could still have decades or centuries to see his daughter on the new mer throne he intends to create.
But no one anticipated the Sea King
taking Taryn captive.
Alaric knows at first glance that Taryn will be his.
Taryn knows at first glance that he is the enemy she’ll have to defeat.
Neither can anticipate how the Triada will use them
to shape the world both above and beneath the waves.
An unlikely friend…
Jasmine Bleu, one of the king’s courtesans, is soon the only friend Taryn can claim, a woman who shows her the cost of the Black Tails’ war.
Jasmine Bleu
A bitter enemy
Silvanus, the Master of the Guardians and hence Alaric’s most trusted guard, would sooner see Taryn killed than let her get her claws in the king.
The Black Tails will do anything
to reclaim their would-be queen…
But the longer Taryn is in Daryatla, the more she wonders if anything is quite what she’d been taught. If perhaps the king isn’t so much a tyrant…if the mer aren’t quite as oppressed…and if anyone can be trusted when those she loves most threaten the thing she most craves.
And the longer Taryn is in Daryatla, the more Alaric wonders if there’s hope that he’ll yet outrun the sins that have so long stood between him and the Triada. But the cost of salvation may prove too high for his timeworn heart, and Alaric may be doomed to be nothing but a cautionary tale for those to come.
The origin story of the First Sea King,
Foretold,
will be coming soon!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.