Exalted Preview Inside 👀
Aug 19, 2022 4:31 pm
Hello wonderful readers!
Only about one more week until Exalted is released! Hope you're all as excited as I am 😁 To say thanks for sticking with me throughout this series, I've put a preview of the first chapter of Exalted below. Once you finish it, head over to Amazon and preorder your copy of Exalted today.
As always, thank you for reading, and have a wonderful weekend!
Sincerely,
Emily Frances
Exalted - Chapter One
I watched the flames of the torches fastened to the wall dance and twist, burning equally as bright now as they had been several hours ago when Gaderel ushered us into this prison cell. The way the orange glow illuminated the black iron bars of the cage we were trapped in was becoming mesmerizing, and I found myself lulled into an almost hypnotic state, my overall shock at the situation replacing virtually every other emotion.
At the back of the cell, I could hear soft footsteps as Ciro paced around like a trapped animal. He was walking circles around where Yulian, Nicolette, and I all sat in the middle of the floor, each of us lost in our respective thoughts of doom and dread.
“Aren’t we going to try anything?” Ciro asked for what had to be the fifth time now. “We won’t last in a trial with the angels, and that Gaderel guy has it out for us.”
“Ramiel did say that he would do whatever he could to help us out,” Nicolette answered him for the fifth time. Yulian nodded along in agreement with her again as if he felt safest picking a side.
“So we’re going to stay here and wait for them to decide our fate?” Ciro banged his fist against the black iron of the cage. Despite his vampire super-strength, the bars didn’t even dent.
“Jenna, what do you think?” Nicolette ignored Ciro’s repeated outbursts and addressed me instead. “After all, Ramiel said you were the key to this whole thing. Got any great and magnificent ideas to get us away from here?”
I dragged my gaze away from the pulsating glow that the flames were casting on the bars. I felt sluggish, like it was entrancing and dulling my senses in some way. “Not as far as I know. I think Ramiel was making it up as he went along.”
“What, like we do?” Nicolette snorted, entertaining herself before a glare from Ciro shut her down.
“I’m just saying,” I continued, refusing to let their exchange ruin the flow of my thoughts. “Ramiel wasn’t exactly helping us out, no matter what he and Clark said. Those hints were confusing at best. And now he wants us to stay put here? While he alone tries to convince a jury of angels that we mere mortals aren’t any danger? It seems suspect to me.”
More than anything, I wanted Ramiel to be wrong about pegging me as the key to this whole situation. What he had said before leaving us to grapple with our thoughts and mortality in this cell was that ‘the witch who stands between three realms’ was necessary for preventing a potential war and putting the three realms at peace. That was a lot of stress for one witch, and especially for one that had only come into her full powers recently and had also needed help to achieve that.
There was no way that I was the key to stopping all this. I had barely been able to create a potion when I first came to the academy – I still wasn’t able to make a really great one – and my academic record was much less than stellar. It simply felt like if there was to be a witch chosen to save the world, a more skilled one would have been a better choice.
“Maybe so.” Ciro was still pacing around the small space, mulling over what I had said. “But on the other hand, he is an angel. He should have more knowledge about this stuff than us.”
“Yeah, I’m not convinced these angels are as great as they want everyone to believe.” Nicolette was brushing dirt off her foot, frowning at it as if it was her biggest concern in the world. “So far, they’ve tried to kill us, tricked us, imprisoned us, made a spectacle out of us marching us into this prison cell, and now they’re going to put us on the business end of an unfair trial. Not a great track record for the angels so far.”
