PW #251: YA Science Fantasy: SAINTED

Manuscript Status: 1 week delivery

Mentor Name: L.L. McKinney
Mentee Name: Terry Bell
Title: SAINTED
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fantasy
Word Count: 107,000

Pitch: 

Lethya’s the Empire’s volatile shield: telekinetic prodigy, gifted fighter, but banned from battle for breaking religious law.

Ander’s the Empire’s double-edged sword: military scion, apex student, and heir to the sins of the century’s most infamous felon – his mother.

Caught in the clash between church and state, their fight to survive means treason… and playing into the hands of the devil behind bars.

Excerpt: 

April 19th, 4355 –

I owe everything to the earthquake.

Magnitude 5, enough to rattle the Principality. Tayman and I lost an hour putting Ander back to sleep. But what the earthquake gave me… I barely have the words. Shifts noted behind Columbia Shroud. Went to assess dig site this morning – and there it was. An entrance to a transit tunnel. Partial exposure. Potentially walkable within two weeks. By May, I will be the first person to enter Columbia in a thousand years.

– Field Notes of Velia Fane

July, 4365

The girl stood alone in the ravaged room, staring at the wreckage around her.

Her breath whistled harsh as a hurricane, and the thorny reek of ozone said she had bare seconds before everything went to hell again. Another storm was rising. It quivered in each scalpel buried in the cement walls, in every bloodstain boiling on the floor, in the itch sizzling up her spine. Everything screamed to get out.

Everything but the boy blocking the only doorway.

Sparks flickered as she bludgeoned panic-drunk thoughts into orderly conduct. Out. She needed out.

“Move,” she snapped.

The boy grimaced, uncomprehending. Just like the cowards before. She couldn’t stand it.

The cowards had stared when she’d awoken. They’d frozen when she’d screamed for help. They’d fled when the first tempest hit.

Now their blood painted a trail straight back to the boy.

Something behind him called out: “Fane?”