Title: Goldie
Author: Danni Maxwell
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: July 6, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 12400
Genre: Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, mythical creatures, Magic/Magic users, Fairy tales, fantasy, romance
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Synopsis
Cast out of her village after being
accused of killing her father, Marigold Lovelock has nothing but the clothes on
her back and the willpower to make it into the woods.
With the company of an Ursidae, a
mythical creature known as Squeak, she seeks out The One, the Storyteller who
speaks the truth.
Excerpt
Goldie
Danni Maxwell © 2020
All Rights Reserved
A person falls in love with three people
in their lifetime. At least that’s what the Storytellers will show you in their
legends.
Each love will come at a time in a
person’s life when they need it most. Even if they don’t realise they needed it
in the first place.
There’s the first love, the one who
teaches what the magical thing called love is. It’s young love. It’s innocent,
and it’s pure. It ends far before it can truly begin, but it will always remain
the first love of one’s life.
The second love is a hard love to
endure. It changes a person, teaches them that a heart can break, that a person
can wound you more than a knife, that not every love is a fairy tale. It makes
a person stronger; it shapes them, helps them grow, teaches them that a heart
can mend in time.
Then there is the third love, a love
that has no warning, that sneaks up on a person and takes them by surprise.
It’s the love that they didn’t know they needed, the one they were not looking
for. It’s the love that will truly last the test of time. This is the love that
can withstand all the battles a person has to endure. It’s unwavering. This is
the love that feels like a fairy tale.
*
Marigold Lovelock had heard these
legends more times than she could count, but she never once believed in them.
Her father was a Storyteller. His job
was to be the one a person seeks for the knowledge, the truth, the wisdom. His
job was his life. It took precedence over everything else, including Marigold.
Her father’s favourite thing about his title, his powers, was the fact that
people blindly adored him. They believed her father could do no wrong, that he
was the one with all the answers. He could gather as many of the townspeople as
he wanted, tell them of the stories, the legends, the prophecies that had been
passed down to him by Storytellers past. And the townspeople would gather; they
would flock, run, rally to the town’s centre to hear a new story each day;
their eyes and hearts full of belief, of wonder and whimsy.
They truly loved her father, for he
could tell them all the things their hearts desired to hear, could warn them of
the dangers of the beasts and demons that lay beyond the town’s edge. Her
father was the light, and Marigold his shadow. The people treated her like she
was nothing, like all she did was bring the darkness wherever she went. They
skittered away if she got too close, made shifty, judging glances with narrowed
eyes and lips pressed in tight lines. The children were ushered away and taught
to keep their distance.
Though Goldie never knew why they did
this, she wondered if it was out of fear, and if that were true, perhaps she
was afraid of them too. She’d shy away from everyone as they would hiss and
pull away from her. Because why would you even try to fit in when you’re a
puzzle with one too many pieces that will never be completed?
Her life had never been easy. She lost
her mother to childbirth, she lost her father to the Storytellers, and she lost
herself to the darkness of being alone. The darkness enveloped the townspeople
too but not as heavy as it weighed on her. They all had lost their light; her
father had died this past spring, and though the doctor had said he passed from
age and peacefully in his sleep, Marigold wondered if he had died of a broken
heart. He was always so lost without her mother, and he blamed Marigold for
that loss; it’s why she never felt close to him, to anyone.
Everyone believed Marigold was cursed,
that she possessed something inside her so dark and wicked that it had killed
her mother, and that anyone who got close to her, anyone who loved her, would
fall dead to the curse too. Her father was just another reason for them to fear
her. The townspeople were lost without their Storyteller. The next was still
learning the stories and prophecies, and so they had no one to turn to for
guidance, for what should be done about Marigold, about who they thought she
was, what she was to become, and who she might hurt in the process. The elders
of the town were brought up on the stories, but they could only remember so
much. Only the mind of a Storyteller could remember all. Their older minds were
forgetting, slowly with time, but they never failed to forget the prophecy of
the Kalakuta. That is what they believed Marigold was.
The Kalakuta were ancient beings, the
ones the elders and Storytellers alike would call “the potion people of death.”
Their prophecy tells of the Kalakuta being a sentient being that lived long
before the time of people. Beings that, once they found a host, would kill any
human or being in its path, for the darkness inside told them to do so. They
were the makers of death. Her father, the Storyteller, had spoken of a Kalakuta
preying on their town, feasting on the sick, the weak, the lost, believing that
over time they would eventually take everyone, and there would be no one left
to stop it. The minute Marigold’s father had passed, it was like any suspicion
they had of Marigold being a Kalakuta had all but been confirmed.
This is why she now stood at the edge of
the wood, at the final edge of sand between the unknown and the town, her only
belongings scattered just beyond the trees, and the entire town standing at her
back, waiting to be rid of her at last. Their mourning period was over for the
Storyteller. The townspeople were no longer grieving; they were rioting. The
moment their mourning cloud had lifted, they went on a manhunt for her. They
found Marigold hidden away, wishing to be forgotten in her small hut of a home.
They were all afraid of her, just as she was afraid of them. No one was willing
to get too close to her. She cowered in her corner, begging someone, anyone, to
leave her alone.
Someone looped rope around her body,
cinching it at her waist and all but dragging her out of her home toward the
dark wood. She was scrambling to grab anything she possibly could, begging them
to stop, promising them that she would willingly go if they just let her grab
her things. They stopped for a moment, enough time for her to grab a satchel
with two dresses to change, her pouch of every coin she had saved that her
father had hesitated to give her as gifts on special days, and the only drawing
she had of her mother, one that her father had tried to throw away in anger and
mourning on the anniversary of her death, Marigold’s birthday. It was the one
thing Marigold had treasured all her life. It was the last thing she had.
“Now. Get going,” the man holding the
end of the rope had grunted, tugging on the rope so hard her chest ached with
the effort to breathe.
The people gathered in her hut parted at
the door. They led Marigold out of the town to the wood with a rope around her
waist, something hard pressing into her back, pushing her forward while tears
streamed down her face. She gripped at her satchel, her heart breaking with
every step she put in behind her. Please, she had begged them. Please don’t
send me away.
All that resulted in was her being
shoved even harder, falling to the ground, her crying out in pain as something
hard, no doubt the broom handle of a local keeper, cracked down on her back.
Her things were grabbed by the children, her satchel tossed, her dresses
strewn, her photo crumpled into the tiniest ball. Her pouch of money pressed
against her hip, hidden in the pocket she’d sewn into her dress herself. It was
the only thing they couldn’t take from her.
“Be gone, Kalakuta!” They were all
shouting obscene comments at her now, where she stood straight as a pin, her
bare toes touching the edges of the dark wood.
“Please, I am not a—”
“You are a killer, Marigold Lovelock.
You killed your parents; you kill the elders, the children even! You have a
darkness in you that will never settle. We ought to kill you, but that would be
too kind of us. We shall let the beasts of the woods decide your fate. Never
return to Veritas, or we will change our minds. Kalakuta.” The man spit at her.
The crowds were throwing things at her, rocks and sticks and anything they
could use to hurt her.
“Please—” Marigold pleaded one last
time, her cheeks dripped with tears, her whole body trembling. She had never
been so scared in all her life.
“She does not learn. We have no pity,”
an elder breathed in hushed tones.
“Let us show her what we do to
Kalakuta.”
This was the last thing Marigold heard
before she felt a sharp, blunt pain at the back of her skull, and the world
went black.
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