Wednesday, February 8, 2017

SVS Agent Round 14: THE WITCH AND THE DEMON, YA Fantasy

Title: THE WITCH AND THE DEMON
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 75,000

Is Your Main Character hot or cold?

Ebba is cold as ice under pressure. Forced to fight against the eleven deadliest sorcerers in the world, she uses her wits and levelheadedness to survive. Ironically, her other weapon is blood made of liquid fire. 

Query:

Fleeing a witch-hunt and fatally injured, eighteen-year-old Ebba wants her death to mean more than her life did. When she stumbles upon Kryptos, a demon whose heart has been ripped out, pity prompts her to sacrifice her heart as a replacement.

Upon waking, Ebba discovers Kryptos has saved her by replacing her blood with fire, but also bound her life to his will. He conscripts her into a death match with eleven other champions of Hell. She’s less than enthused about the tournament’s prize—leadership of an upcoming invasion of her world. Determined to right her mistake, she resolves to sabotage the demons. Even at the cost of her life.

Before Ebba can backstab Kryptos, she needs his training to survive battles against a shadow-wielding knight, a witch who sees the future, and a God-King. She gets entirely too close to Kryptos when she accidentally initiates a courtship. How was she supposed to know throwing a severed head at him would be taken as a proposal of marriage? Kryptos turns out to be charming, handsome, a bit awkward—and utterly dedicated to world domination.

As Ebba’s heartless condition erodes her conscience, Kryptos becomes increasingly tempting. Without any remaining ties to humanity, it becomes harder and harder to betray her only friend—who possesses her heart in more ways than one.

First 250 words:

Ebba ran into the moonless night. Her soaked dress clung to her skin, wind and wetness competing to freeze her into a corpse. Tree roots banged her feet and fatigue crept up from her shaking limbs to numb her brain. If she fell, she might not be able to get up again. Keep moving. Get as far away from the witchfinder as possible, may he be reincarnated as a constipated drunk’s chamber pot.

In the darkness, directions blurred. She focused on climbing up the mountain, away from her village. Faster, faster, faster. Her lungs took on the weight of iron balls.

Her left knee finally gave out—right when another root caught her ill-fitting clog. Her ankle bent sideways with a crack. She hit the dirt.

Waves of agony crashed over her. Mustn’t stop moving. But her body refused to rise. She wanted to scream or cry. Instead, Ebba took a deep breath. To focus her mind, she pinched her face, right on top of the scabs from the witchfinder’s pins. The itching behind her eyes from too long without sleep, the burning of her throat, the blistering sores on her hand—everything faded away.

Heartbeat steady, she groped for a tree root. Her right hand oozed pus from the burns on her palm, so she used her left one to pull herself into a sitting position. The merest touch to the swollen lump was torture. Through the pain, the rational part of her noted this felt worse than a sprain.

1 comment:

  1. These days are dark and the nights are cold, can Ebba save her heart and soul?! Please send your query, first 50 pages, and synopsis in the email body to whitley[at]inklingsliterary[dot]com. Thanks!

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