Skip to product information
1 of 2

In Extremis (Princes' Game 5)

In Extremis (Princes' Game 5)

Regular price $5.00 USD
Regular price Sale price $5.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Format

Ebook delivered via email immediately!

An Eldritch Ambassador began the regeneration of a dragon, a regeneration that nearly ended in the harem of a Chatcaavan worldlord. Rescued before he could die, the Emperor now faces the nearly impossible challenge of assailing an empire intent on conquest while reconciling the life he lived before with the person he's becoming.

He can't do it alone.

Sediryl's impending capture by pirates inspired her to a daring gamble, one that landed her in the confidences of their megalomaniacal leader. That this has placed her perfectly to pass intelligence to her allies is a stroke of luck, one that ties her to the very heart of the Empire and the fragile link that holds them all together.

That link is dying.

Neither the Chatcaavan Empire nor the Alliance will recover from the titanic clash toward which they are accelerating... and the only thing standing between them is a frail network of rebels and spies, of allied Eldritch and Pelted and Chatcaava. But can such different people hold together against such impossible odds? And can they pay the cost to stop an unwinnable war, when the price is so incredibly high?

Genre (setting): space opera (Pelted)
Tags: psychology, high stakes politics, pirates, galactic war, ensemble cast, dragons, elves (space)
Rating: R for violence, abuse, adult situations

Excerpt from Chapter 1

There was safety... and then there was safety.

This was the epiphany Sediryl picked at like an oyster clamped around a pearl as the days stretched into one week, then another, examining her naiveté and finding it painful and revelatory. She had lived a life of cloistered privilege for decades on the Eldritch homeworld, and thought it a risk of breathtaking audacity to flee it for the Alliance. The love affairs she’d had there had seemed daring and transgressive. When they’d seen her disinherited, those fears had felt validated.

She had lived on the edge and bled there, and thought her courage tested.

Sitting on the bridge of the Visionary, Sediryl petted the rainbow fur of her dog’s head as she stared out the windows at the sinister darkness, where hundreds of pirates and slavers had made their lair. To coast, silent and Dusted, through this abyss, easing her way ever closer to its center, knowing that detection would bring death only if she was lucky, because the alternative was life as someone’s slave...

She neither believed that she could live with so many days of tension, nor could she fathom how it had become normal. The computer reported that her resting heart rate was now fifteen to twenty beats faster, but she felt absurdly calm.

If this was courage, it felt like numbness.

This was the world the military lived in, one where the stakes really were as high as her emotions had insisted every crisis was. She could understand that now. Barely. What she was grappling with was the realization that this had always been the world Liolesa lived in. All the petty bickering and self-involved—and self-manufactured—drama in which the Eldritch indulged was possible because Liolesa was the one living here, where failure meant slavery and war and loss. And this was the world Sediryl would have to live in too, if she wanted the power Liolesa was offering.

That she was existing in it now without crumbling didn’t feel like proof she could handle it, even though her hand on Bells’s fur was steady. Because it wasn’t enough to survive here. She had to win. And she wanted to. Wanted to prove that she could. And that made her uncomfortable. That she could be so afraid, and yet be nurturing this... this competitive streak that trivialized the situation. She knew what they were doing wasn’t a game, but the urge to beat everyone else at it remained, lurking beneath the terror and the sobriety. Was that something Liolesa was also hiding? Or had the centuries shown her enough unspeakable things to destroy that urge?

Sediryl thought cousin Lisinthir might be sympathetic. He lived in this world too. She remembered the way he moved, how he evaluated everything with that hardened gaze, the hand that too casually orbited his sword, as if feeling the gravitational pull of inevitable violence. He would have made a good confidant.

He would have understood. That didn’t surprise her at all.

What did was the sense that maybe Jahir would have understood too. That the youth she’d grown up with, when she’d been gawky and brash and full of untarnished dreams and plans... that gentle and quiet youth might have grown up into someone who could go to war and die to win it.

Jahir would have understood her fears, and how completely lost she felt going from the sheltered childhood she’d thought so intense to... this. Lisinthir, her unwanted aggression, and her desire to be triumphant over the broken bodies of their enemies. Both of them would have been willing auditors to the hardships of being an Eldritch and yet living in a future both more expansive and less safe than the one their people imagined for themselves.

And neither of them was here.

Sediryl buried her face in Bells’s fur, scattering the dog’s virtual fish halo.

View full details

Formats

  • Ebook - In your choice of e-format (epub, mobi, etc). You'll receive an email from Bookfunnel, the ebook distributor, with download instructions.
  • Audio - If this book has an audio format, it will be listed. Not all books have audio, however, and some series have incomplete audio editions. You'll receive an email from Bookfunnel, the audio distributor, with download instructions.
  • Paperback - A print-on-demand paperback, this ships from the printer directly.
  • Doodled Paperback - This paperback will be signed by the author, and have a doodle drawn on its half-title page! This personalized option will ship from the author and may take 1-2 months to reach you.