B5: YA Fantasy: FACING DEMONS

Title: FACING DEMONS

Age Category: Young Adult

Genre: Fantasy

Word Count: 108,000

Pitch:

In an African inspired fantasy, twin mercenaries Niles and Cassia must hunt for a hidden foe, bearing encrypted letters. To succeed means unearthing a past best kept buried. But their secrets might bury them anyway.

First 250 Word of Manuscript:

The guard stared at Cassia’s hands, searching for signs of Aeliana’s fire. He would find none. He motioned for her to flip her hands over to inspect her palms without touching her. Touching a prisoner was dangerous without knowing what she was. Cassia fought to hide the amusement of watching the guard run through the element wielding lists.

He gestured for her to continue walking down the tunnel. As they approached a water basin, she slowed, half expecting him to hold her under to be sure she wasn’t one of the Drowned, and was a little insulted when he just pushed her along. She wasn’t looking forward to nearly drowning, but she didn’t like the assumption.

The guard stopped at the entrance to one of the cells and glanced at the darkness pooled at her feet. Shadow? Check. He tilted his nose into the air, taking a deep breath. The heavy rains pelted the rails of the small windows at ground-level of the Alsene Hold. He’d smell wet soil and nothing else. The ease of his next breath told her as much. Another check in his lists.

Relief washed over the guard smoothing the skin between his brows and easing the tension in his shoulders as he locked her cell. Yet the way he cut his eyes in her direction said that he still considered her a conundrum if not a threat. That he wasn’t fully convinced. And he shouldn’t be. One did not get tossed underground into the Alsene execution cells for being a conundrum.