The Special Editions and Horde Anxiety

The context of this post: Owlcrate released a premium edition of This Kingdom. It is a gorgeous book. It went out to their subscribers, and it is highly sought after on resale sites. They recently released the left over copies for general purchase and the copies sold out in something like 3 hours. The Horde is angry.

::hug::

I’ve fortified myself with the last on my Earl Grey Starlight Sencha tea. One thing at a time.

We have nothing to do with Owlcrate distribution. We didn’t notify you about this sale, because we didn’t know about it. We do not have any backstock of Owlcrate author copies. They gave us 4 books, and we kept one, gave each of the kids one, and I’m saving the last for for Jeaniene Frost at her request.

Much is being made about the exclusive content in Owlcrate edition. It’s a very short story that describes the events you will discover in the first chapter of the next book. We designed it to be a true bonus. It is not essential. You are not missing vital information.

I’m so sorry it sold out so fast. However, there will be other special editions. One is coming up in July. Since I got in trouble last time for mentioning the Owlcrate too early, we can’t announce it, but there is a hint on Maggie’s page.

There is going to be another special edition after that. Look, here are all of the tip sheets (signing pages) we have to sign for it.

We understand the frustration. We are discussing our options in regard to special editions. We will see what we are allowed to do.

On a somewhat related note, there is a sudden uptick in concerns on how the vellum is packaged. This is why we did the trial run. Two out of ten packages arrived damaged, so we’ve leveled up our envelope stuffing skills. The velum is placed into a plastic sleeve with the chipboard and then into a bubble mailer with a cardboard insert.

I made a video for you. It is not as pretty as when the kids do it, but it shows the whole thing. I even set it to lofi music for you.

Each package is insured, so if your vellum arrives damaged, email us and we will fix it. I’m not even going to show you the pictures of our dining room, because it looks like a warzone with fortifications of bubble mailers and cardboard and stacks of vellum a foot high. We are prepackaging your orders. Right now our hold up is Becka’s map. She is putting the finishing touches and as soon as it’s ready, we will print it and rev things up.

Please chill.

Here is a small snippet for you to reassure you that we do have fun extras that we will make available to you. I think we posted it before, but I can’t find it, so you get it again.

Deep breath, everyone. Especially me. I need to handwrite a letter in French this morning for the French special edition. This will be a whole thing.

Warning: This snippet contains spoilers for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Homecoming

There were few things more wretched than flying.

Solentine leaned back, shifting his weight out of habit. Not that the beast under him would notice his horse-riding expertise. She was many times larger than the biggest war stallion, and she viewed horses as refreshing snacks.

He angled the tether of magic linking them.

Down.

The drezmur spread her huge, pale wings, holding them parallel to the ground, tilted downward, and softly sunk through the ocean of air. Below them the mountains of the Trihorn beckoned, sheathed in greenery.

Solentine breathed in the crisp air and exhaled. The weight of being Solentine Dagarra, courtier and head of the Shears, dropped from his shoulders like a rain-heavy cloak. Here, in these mountains, he was just Sol. Beloved son, cherished nephew, and favorite brother and cousin.

He steered the drezmur to a familiar spot atop a low peak, a rocky clearing barely large enough for her to land and fed a little more magic into the bond.

Here.

She banked. He grasped her three-foot long feathers with both hands. The drezmur reared, her body nearly vertical as she rotated her wings, fanning them forward and back. He flattened himself against her back. Her massive taloned legs stretched forward, and the drezmur landed.

Sol let go. The world swam a little. He was nearly at his limit.

The drezmur crouched, hugging the ground. Sol slipped off her back. Normally his magic would have carried him to the ground, letting him touch down lightly on his toes, but the drezmur drained him to almost nothing. He slid down her shoulder and dropped like a sack of rocks. Grace incarnate. If a baby rabbit happened to hop out of the underbrush and touch him with a fluffy paw, he’d topple over.

The drezmur waited. Sol brushed the beast’s soft feathers and patted her neck. “Away with you.”

The drezmur turned her long, flexible neck, bringing her massive head around to face him. Her turquoise eyes stared straight at him, from above a beak that was large enough to swallow him whole. The beast focused on him with unerring intensity, deciding whether to devour him or fly away.

This was the most dangerous part of the flight. Not the bumpy ride through the clouds or racing away from thunderstorms. No, this right here was the moment his life hung in the balance.

He grinned at her. She was a greedy, opportunistic creature, and he respected her commitment to her appetites. They were kindred spirits in a way, always pushing the limits. Sadly for her, he wasn’t in the mood to get devoured this evening.

He sent the tether of magic upward, to the sky.

Away.

The drezmur reared. For a moment he was struck by the sheer beauty of the creature. She towered above him, a perfect meld of a lean hound and a colossal bird of prey, her pale feathers, so soft they were practically fur, set aglow by the evening light. She beat her wings, the edges of the contour feathers flashing with gold, and took the sky. The wind buffeted him, nearly knocking him to the ground.

Sol watched her soar and headed for the trees. The moment he was under the canopy, he severed the magic tether between them.

The drezmur shrieked, mourning the loss of her sustenance.

He was slightly unsteady on his feet. Fatigue gnawed at him, a consequence of too magic drained for way too long. Sol would’ve loved nothing more than to sit down right here, but the drezmur hung above the mountain. He could see her through the gaps between the leaves. She’d dived at him after a landing twice before.  He wasn’t about to give her an opportunity for the third.

Sol walked deeper into the green tunnel of trees and followed the path down. He knew this mountain like the back of his hand, every rock, every tree, every flower. Normally he could run down the trail blindfolded all the way to the bottom without ever stumbling. But right now, Sol took it nice and slow.

The drezmur screeched again, venting her frustration to the sky. An ornery beast, but she was damn fast. A cautious man would’ve picked a different mount. But then a cautious man would’ve never gotten on the drezmur in the first place.  He didn’t know who was the first fool to climb onto a drezmur, but if he ever met  that person,  he would treat them to the finest drink in Three Moons.

A few minutes later, the path turned, hugging the side of the mountain, and he came to an overlook. Below, a beautiful valley lay cradled between mountain slopes. Long, orderly rows of centuries old grapevines, clumps of olive groves, aprika orchards bearing unripe fruit, and the occasional field, green with young sprouts of wheat and millet. In the middle of it all, a small castle rose, its four textured towers and thick walls of brown stone in perfect harmony with the picturesque landscape.

The sky was clear. The drezmur had given up and departed.

Sol sat on the familiar grey rock jutting out of the side of the mountain and looked at the castle.  The Demkair. The sun was setting, and the walls of the old fort nearly glowed in the dying evening light. Beautiful…

Eighteen years ago, he sat on this rock, looked at the castle just like this, and contemplated murdering his grandfather.  The echo of the old rage stirred inside him. He’d had many enemies since, but none of them inspired such deep-seated hatred. Almost two decades had passed, and it was barely scabbed over.

The old saying was true. Nothing hated like family.

The first eight years of his life were spent in a kind of torment no child should have endured. He was neglected and starved in the best of times and beaten in the worst. He learned to lie and steal, to never admit fault, and make use of every opportunity, because nobody else cared for him enough to ensure he survived. He’d become a selfish feral animal.

When his father appeared, as if by magic, and carried him away to Pralleg, Sol spent the first two years of his new existence waiting for the other shoe to drop. His father spent time with him and genuinely cared if he was happy; his stepmother adored him and spoiled him with hugs. He ate delicious food, he wore nice clothes, he learned to read, to use a blade, and ride a horse. Once he’d fallen asleep atop a tower, and when he awoke, the entire castle buzzed like a beehive as his parents and their soldiers and retainers searched for him.

Things like this didn’t happen to children like him. Surely, this was a lie. He told himself to be wary, unable to let go of the suspicion that he was being fattened like a calf for the slaughter. Nothing was free, and everything had a cost. Eventually this charmed existence would end. He hoarded his allowance and planned his escape when things turned sour.

When he was ten years old, his grandfather requested his presence at the ancestral castle. He was sent to Demkair for one summer month. When the beatings started, he was almost relieved. Here it was, the price he had to pay for all those wonderful months at Pralleg, wrapped in his parents’ love.

When he came back from Demkair, he hid his bruises. He could pay this price. If he said something, the cost of his new life could go up.

Sol had learned the pattern quickly, and the second summer he knew what to expect. It started with cutting comments, then the insults turned into continuous berating, followed by being locked in a room for days without food for the slightest transgression, real or imagined, and then, finally, it progressed into thrashings. At first a slap, then a closed fist, or whatever the old asshole had at hand.  A stick, a goblet, a helmet ripped from the wall and thrown at full strength.

It was familiar and therefore survivable. He’d had it worse before. Had the old asshole stuck to the pattern, Sol might have endured longer, but the third summer brought two changes.

First, his cousin Rumian had joined him. He was ten years old, a skinny kid with big dark eyes, who trailed Sol like an annoying puppy. They’d met briefly at family gatherings. Rumian never suffered the way Sol had. He was a well-loved child who talked too much and smiled too bright.

Second, the old man started with a beating. Sol had dismounted from his horse, knelt before his grandfather, and the old bastard kicked him in the face. Apparently, his haircut had been judged displeasing.

That kick had shattered something inside Sol. He’d had four years of being Izarn’s son, heir to the Margrave. He was no longer a beaten-down orphan. A hard, ugly thing reared its head inside him, and it wanted to bite back. The next day the old man beat him with his walking stick, so Sol struck back at the thing that cursed asshole loved most. He cut down the prized grape vine and sneaked back into his room, seen by no one.

 It should’ve ended there.  The old man would rage but he had no proof. Sol sat in his room, with his window open, and when he realized that Rumian would be blamed in his place, he told himself he didn’t care. He barely knew his cousin. Only revenge and survival mattered, and he was happy he’d gotten away with it.

Then the screams started.

Sol sat on his bed, and by the third scream, it felt like someone stabbed him in the heart. It shouldn’t have mattered. He shouldn’t have cared. But listening to that beating was worse than getting beaten himself. He put a pillow over his head to try to block out the sound, but Rumian just kept screaming.

The thrashing finally ended, and Sol sat alone in his room, a sweaty pillow crumpled in his hands. The storm inside him refused to calm. He felt rotten. Low. He felt like scum.

It shook him. It disturbed him in a way nothing had disturbed him before. He struggled to make sense of it, and the answer finally came to him, congealing from the haze of his self-loathing. Rumian was family. Sol’s parents taught him that family was to be protected. His father and mother put themselves between him and danger, and he, a coward and a low life, let his little cousin be punished in his stead. He thought he had to pay for his life by enduring the old man’s assaults. The real price was making sure Rumian did not endure them at all.

For the next week, Sol made sure he was the one who bore the full brunt of the old bastard’s rage. The further it went, the more vicious the beatings became, and Sol sensed by some survival instinct that he was just a stand in. As soon as Rumian got better, the old man would go after him and finish what he started.

He had to murder his grandfather before he took Rumian’s life. That was the only way to atone and save his cousin.  

The day before Sol was going to put his plan in action, his aunt arrived and liberated him and her son in a blaze of glory.  The old man met his daughter with his blades in front of the entire household, and she had beaten him senseless. Then she collected him and her son and told them they would never have to come back. It was the second time in his life he had been rescued.

He watched the rays of setting sun play on the distant castle walls.  The old bastard had disowned Aunt Griele for that public beating, but the day after he died, Father handed the keys to the castle to her. Demkair became a place of warmth and family, one half of the twin core of his existence, the other half being in Pralleg, with his father and stepmother.

That summer had defined the course of his life. It gave him purpose. He would never be a Margrave like his father. Izarn was a general, powerful and skilled, and yet he had no idea that his own son was beaten by his grandfather for years. Power was nothing without awareness.

His siblings would make excellent generals.  He had to be something else, a cruel cold bastard who sat on the currents of information like a spider, identifying threats before they had a chance to cause harm and cutting them at the root. Everything he had done from that point on, everything he had achieved, was in the pursuit of that one goal: to keep the Demarrs safe.

Sixteen hours ago, he met a threat he couldn’t eliminate.

She said her name was Maggie. She had appeared out of nowhere in Kair Toren and somehow attached herself to Ramond vi Everard.

Sol never told anyone who had cut down that prized grapevine, but she knew he had done it and that he let Rumian take the fall for it. She told him what went through his head while his cousin screamed. She knew his most private thoughts and his deepest shame. And then she told him that his uncle was about to get swindled and the family would lose Demkair.

Not much unnerved him anymore. But that conversation had raised the hair on the back of his arms. If not for Ramond’s interference, he would’ve slit her throat right there. Twelve hours ago, when he climbed atop the drezmur, he still intended to do so.

If Maggie lied and sent him on a fool’s errand, he would expose her as a fake, and then he would kill her. She had way too much influence over Ramond, and he had to pry him free before her lies put him in danger.

If Maggie’s warning was true, he would fix the problem, and then he would return to Kair Torren and kill her. If she knew enough to save his family, she knew enough to destroy it. And he would not allow that.

She’d knocked him off balance, but the answer to all his problems was really very simple. Maggie had to die.

Then as the drezmur sped through the sky, he decided to read the notes she shoved into his hands before he left. What he read in there made him ill. He had scrutinized the pages twice now.  They didn’t say anything different.

Sol needed his aunt’s counsel. Of all the people in his life, she was the one who could make sense of this. But before anything else happened, he had to confront his uncle and find out if Maggie’s warning was true.