The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening by H.D. Strozier

The Immortal Queen Tsubame

This book contains violence and explicit sexual situations.

The magical world wants nothing to do with MaLeila Samara. The first reason is she’s a powerful no name sorceress with no magical ties who inherited the magical legacy of the most powerful western sorcerers to live, Claude Thorne. The second reason is because she had the audacity to claim the right while having kinky hair and chocolate colored skin.

So MaLeila gave the magical world the proverbial fuck you, fought off the sorcerers and sorceress who sought to see her killed for the bragging rights and lives in relative content with her two companions, both former slaves to Claude. Bastet—the powerful sorceress with an affinity for yang magic who introduced her to the magical world; and Devdan, the brooding sorcerer with an affinity for yin magic who tried to kill her when they first met but who MaLeila now goes back and forth between hating and wanting to fall in bed with.

They’re admittedly co-dependent, fiercely protective of each other while at the same time resentful, though they’re more than willing to mostly ignore the latter until the Magic Council sends Marcel Brant to help them unravel The Immortal Queen Tsubame, the newest threat to the order and secrecy of the magical world. But Marcel’s more interested in admittedly having sex with MaLeila than finding Tsubame and because of his influence, for the first time since learning it existed, MaLeila wants to know all that magical world has to offer much to Bastet and Devdan’s chagrin. Exploring the magical world also means that MaLeila, Bastet, and Devdan have to deal with the mistrust and resentment in their bond and the dark past that forced them together before she was even born. And Tsubame is more than happy to use it to her advantage to drive them apart and destroy the only real threat that can stop her from wreaking havoc on the world.

Read an excerpt:

Nothing decent was ever happening in the streets between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. MaLeila remembered her mother always telling her brother when he used to plead with the woman to let him stay out past midnight with the rest of his friends. And the woman had been right. MaLeila knew that first hand.

But unfortunately, being out at those indecent hours seemed to be an occupational hazard for being a sorceress. Or at least it was for MaLeila ever since she became a sorceress, because she was pretty sure other sorceress didn’t have to worry about the Magic Council turning a blind eye to deranged magic users just because they didn’t like her. Regardless, it was better for her to track down the rogue magic users at night after school hours and work than have them directly interfering with the two tomorrow.

“I have to at least give the lady a little credit. She doesn’t want to drain my soul or magical energy to make herself stronger or even kill me. She wants to preserve me in suspended animation to look at me for the rest of my life because I’m pretty. At least that’s new,” MaLeila said to the man in front of her over the loud music of the rave, her arms draped over his shoulders as much as they could be seeing as he was over a foot taller than her 5’ 2”.

“You actually sound excited about the prospect,” he said in a dry tone.

“At least the goal isn’t to kill me or eat my soul or drain my aura so it’s like I never existed and I can’t haunt people or be reincarnated or whatever happens to a sorceress after they die a natural death. At the very least if she does that, someone might discover me in a thousand years and I’ll wake up to a brand new world to explore,” MaLeila said with a shrug hands absently playing with his thick wavy hair. For now, it was just past his shoulders. But in a few months, it would certainly be down his back again.

She didn’t need the flashing lights of the rave to illuminate his golden pecan colored face to know that he was glowering back at her own milk chocolate colored face, both for the comment and for playing with his hair.

Finally he said, “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

MaLeila rolled her eyes and said, “Always so serious Devdan.”

“You’re too nonchalant about your life.”

MaLeila shrugged and said, “Laugh to keep from crying, Dev.”

“Neither one changes anything.”

“You know that from firsthand experience?” MaLeila asked soberly, locking her brown eyes with his grey ones. If he wasn’t forced to stand there with her, if he wasn’t forced to have to blend in with the crowd with her while they waited, MaLeila wouldn’t have asked. But regardless of what Devdan wanted to do, he was cornered at the moment.

He didn’t reply only tensed up just so slightly and pulled her closer as they both sensed the aura of the sorceress that for all intents and purposes wanted to make her decoration for her home. Neither one was sure where she was, but they knew she wouldn’t make her move until they were distracted, until their guard was let down, like the hunter (albeit hunter of human beings) that she was.

“You should go ahead and kiss me right now,” MaLeila whispered, standing on her tiptoes so her face was closer to his.

He did. His lips pressed to hers. If she were a couple of years younger and hadn’t had the experience of having a boyfriend, MaLeila might have been excited about them kissing. But whenever they did this, kissed in the middle of a crowded, pretending to be lost in each other, it was what they called it. Pretend. Mechanical, always aware of their surroundings, not at all focused on the sensations of the kiss if there were any. In essence, there was nothing pleasurable about it.

MaLeila sensed the sorceress get closer and it was then that she opened herself up to her ethereal sight, the sight that didn’t need her physical eyes and that let her see the world that co-existed yet transcended the physical. Essentially she saw “the magic in everything and everyone” so to speak, where everything was dark but illuminated by lights that represented magic, auras, and ethereal connections between those auras.

Devdan pulled his lips away slightly and muttered, “She’s behind you.”

“We have to wait for Bastet.”

“She better hurry up.”

“She’s watching her too. She will be. You know that.”

Just after MaLeila spoke, the lights brightened in the room until there were quick blinding flashes of light. It did a few things for them. The first thing Bastet’s magical light show did was totally distract the rave party goers. It was the reason they led the sorceress chasing MaLeila there in the first place. Everyone was either too drunk, high, distracted by the trick of the lights or all three to notice magic happening. So unless they were aware magic existed, they wouldn’t notice the magic or they’d notice and think it was an illusion. The second thing the light show did was disturb and disrupt the magic of the deranged sorceress. They had deduced before that her magical talents, similarly to Devdan’s, were derived from yin. But the sorceress’ powers weren’t as broad and varied as Devdan’s, and her strength while exacerbated by the magic present at night, was diminished by powerful light that was akin to that of the slightly unfiltered sun. In essence, Bastet’s yang magic.

With the sorceress’ magic diminished and everyone distracted, MaLeila pulled away from Devdan, turned on her heel and summoned her ankh shaped gold plated platinum staff to her right hand. While still using her ethereal vision she undid and redid the magical seams of distance and space to open up a portal to a light filled dimension beneath the sorceress’ feet. It instantly began to suck her in, the event heavily camouflaged by Bastet’s ever brighter and now blinding light show.

In a last desperate attempt to win, the sorceress used the remains of the magic that hadn’t been diminished by the lights to try to put her in the suspended sleep she was infamous for according to her entry in the International Registry of Magic Practitioners. If the woman were at her full strength, she would have no doubt put MaLeila into an instant sleep that would have put her in a state of suspended animation. As it was, MaLeila did start to feel woozy, her body light as though she might float into the air and never come down.

Devdan intervened by manipulating the shadows so that they formed a transparent barrier around MaLeila, protecting her from the sorceress’ efforts against her. The sorceress began to let out a scream, but by that time she’d been sucked all the way into the portal and MaLeila made quick work of repairing the seams of distance and space until the portal was gone and the other dimension was separated from their world once again.

Available on Amazon

About H.D. Strozier

After a year of working in the insurance business, H.D. Strozier thought it was about time she made her passion, writing, her full time job. She generally writes New Adult Fantasy Romances, and every now and then a sexy romantic one-shot. When she’s not writing or doing anything that has something to do with writing (almost never), she’s playing Pokémon, watching anime, reading manga, and other things that portray her as the big nerd she really is.

Follow her on Twitter: @Holly_Dae_