First look at THRONE OF RUNES
(my new Viking romantasy!)
Hi friends,
I don’t usually share work-in-progress chapters, but THRONE OF RUNES releases in just over a month (February 23rd!), and I wanted to give you—my most loyal readers—an exclusive first look before the rest of the world gets their hands on it.
This is my first romantasy series, and it’s a big departure from Jack Mac Paidin. Where Jack’s series is adventure and chaos, THRONE OF RUNES is fire and fate—a slow-burn captor/captive romance set in a Viking-inspired world where royal daughters are murdered at birth, and the one who survived has no idea she’s the key to everything.
Below is Chapter 1, introducing Eira—a huntress, a survivor, and about to have her entire world turned upside down.
I’d love to know what you think. Reply and tell me: does this opening hook you? Would you keep reading?
CHAPTER ONE Hunger and Frost
The doe had been dead for three hours, but her blood still steamed in the cold.
I adjusted the carcass slung around my neck, feeling the weight settle into a familiar ache between my shoulder blades. My breath curled in white puffs that hung in the air like ghosts before dissolving into the gray morning. The forest behind me was silent—too silent, the kind of quiet that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, though I’d checked my surroundings twice before starting the trek.
Stop it, Eira. You’re jumping at shadows.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling. Something had been off all morning. The birds hadn’t sung at dawn. The wind through the pines sounded wrong, whispering a secret message. And when I’d knelt beside the doe to field dress her, I’d found her eyes still open, staring at nothing with an expression that looked almost like fear.
I’d closed them. It seemed the decent thing to do.
The town of Frostmar materialized through the mist ahead—a cluster of timber buildings with moss-covered roofs and smoke rising from a dozen chimneys. I’d made the two-hour walk from Eldhaven because our village had no butcher worth the name, just old Garrik, who was half-blind and charged double for cuts that were more gristle than meat. The coin I’d get for this doe would buy my father’s medicine and keep us fed for a week, maybe two if I was careful.
If I could find someone to buy it.
The road into Frostmar was empty. Not unusual for this time of the morning, but as I walked deeper into town, the silence pressed against me like a physical thing. No merchants were calling out their wares. No children ran between the houses. No clatter of wagon wheels on cobblestones.
Just... silence.
I slowed my pace, my boots striking the stones with sounds that echoed too loudly. Every shopfront was shuttered, black fabric hanging limply above doorways like flags of surrender. Charcoal smears marked the lintels in patterns—symbols from the temples, the kind the Flame Keepers painted during times of mourning.
The acrid smell of smoke clung to everything, thick enough to taste. Not woodsmoke from cooking fires. This was different. Bitter. Herbal. This was smoke from the ceremonial braziers signifying great loss.
My stomach tightened.
What happened here?
I’d been to Frostmar dozens of times over the years, always with a kill to sell, and it had been loud and bustling and full of life. Merchants hawking furs and salted fish. Women gossiping by the well. Children shrieking as they played tag through the market square.
Now it looked like a tomb.
I kept walking, because what else could I do? Turn around and haul this doe back to Eldhaven without selling it? My father needed medicine for his cough, the kind that cost more than I wanted to think about. And winter was coming. We needed every copper I could scrape together.
A flicker of movement caught my eye.
Down a narrow alley to my left, a small group emerged in single file—five, maybe six people, all walking with the slow, measured pace of a funeral procession. Their faces were streaked with soot from brow to cheekbones, eyes blackened like bandits in a storybook. The mark of mourning. The sign that they’d witnessed death and were asking the gods for protection from its shadow.
I’d seen it before, but never like this. Never on so many people at once.
They walked past without looking at me. Didn’t even glance at the doe across my shoulders, which was strange enough on its own. A fresh kill usually drew attention—questions about where I’d hunted, how much I wanted for it, whether I had anything else to sell.
But these people moved like sleepwalkers, their gazes fixed straight ahead, their lips moving in silent prayer.
I swallowed hard and kept going.
Just find the butcher. Sell the doe. Get out.
The main square opened up before me, and my steps faltered.
The great brazier in the center—the one that burned year-round as a symbol of Frostmar’s prosperity—was heaped with something that made the flames roar higher than I’d ever seen. Black smoke poured from it, so thick it turned the air around it to shadow. The bitter reek of burning herbs coated my tongue, and I had to fight the urge to gag.
Around the brazier, a crowd had gathered. Silent. Unmoving. All of them marked with soot.
And at the front, standing so close to the flames, I didn’t know how she wasn’t burning, was a woman in a Veil of Ashes.
I’d heard of them. Everyone had. But I’d never seen one up close.
The veil was sheer black fabric dusted with actual ash, draped from the crown of her head to just below her chin. Even through the gauze, I could see her eyes—pale and cold as winter ice—and the faint curl of satisfaction at the corner of her mouth as she turned to look at me.
My heart kicked against my ribs.
Move, Eira. Don’t stare.
But I couldn’t help it. There was something about the way she stood, the way the crowd seemed to lean toward her like she was the only source of warmth in a frozen world. She raised one hand—slow, deliberate—and the crowd shifted, parting to let her through.
She walked toward me.
Oh, gods.
I forced myself to stand still, even though every instinct screamed at me to run. The woman stopped three paces away, her veil rippling slightly in the smoke-laden air. Up close, I could see the ash wasn’t just dusted on the fabric—it was worked into it, tiny flecks embedded in the weave like stars in a night sky.
“You come from Eldhaven,” she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried, the kind of voice that expected to be obeyed.
I nodded, not trusting my own voice.
“Then you have not heard.”
Heard what?
She tilted her head, and for a moment I thought she was going to reach out and touch me. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her, fingers laced together in a gesture I recognized from temple ceremonies.
“A daughter was born to the royal house three days past.”
My stomach dropped.
Oh.
Oh, no.
“The Ritual of the Blotted Flame was performed at dawn this morning,” the woman continued, her tone as calm as if she were discussing the weather. “The kingdom mourns the loss, as is right and proper. The gods have been appeased.”
I stared at her, my mouth dry, my mind racing.
A daughter. A royal daughter.
Which meant...
“The child has been returned to the First Flame,” the woman said, and there was something in her voice now—satisfaction, maybe, or relief. “The Daughter’s Shadow will not fall upon us. We are protected.”
The crowd behind her murmured in agreement, a low ripple of sound that made my skin crawl.
I wanted to say something. Anything. But the words stuck in my throat, tangled up with revulsion and horror and a sick, creeping dread I didn’t have a name for.
They’d killed a baby.
A baby.
Because she was born female. Because some ancient, twisted prophecy said daughters were dangerous.
I thought of my mother then—just a flash, barely a memory. Brenna. Her hands gentle as she’d braided my hair when I was small, her voice humming a tune I could no longer remember. She’d been kind. Soft-spoken. Everything I wasn’t.
She would have wept at this.
The woman in the veil studied me for a long moment, her pale eyes unreadable behind the ash-dusted gauze.
“You disapprove,” she said quietly.
It wasn’t a question.
I swallowed hard, forcing my voice to work. “I... I should go.”
“Yes,” the woman agreed. “You should.”
She turned away, dismissing me as easily as one might dismiss a servant, and walked back toward the brazier. The crowd closed around her, swallowing her up, and I was left standing there with a dead doe on my shoulders and a knot of rage twisting in my chest.
Move, Eira.
I forced my legs to work, turning away from the square and heading toward the butcher’s shop on the far side of town. My hands were shaking. My breath came too fast, too shallow, and I had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other to keep from breaking into a run.
A baby.
They’d killed a baby.
And everyone here—every single person in this town—thought it was right.
The butcher’s shop was closed.
Of course it was.
I stood in front of the shuttered door, staring at the black fabric draped across it, and felt the last thread of my patience snap.
“Damn it,” I muttered, letting the doe slide off my shoulders. She hit the cobblestones with a heavy thud, and I didn’t care. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.“
I kicked the door. Once. Twice. The wood rattled but didn’t budge.
“They’re all at the square.”
I spun around, my hand going instinctively to the knife at my belt.
A boy stood a few paces away—maybe ten years old, skinny as a rail, with soot smeared across his cheeks in uneven streaks. He watched me with wide, solemn eyes.
“The butcher’s at the square,” he said again. “Everyone is. For the mourning.”
I let out a slow breath and forced my hand away from the knife. “When will he be back?”
The boy shrugged. “Could be hours. Could be all day. Depends on how long the Flame Keepers want to pray.”
Of course.
I crouched down beside the doe, running a hand over her still-warm flank. All this way. All this effort. And for what?
“You’re a hunter,” the boy said, moving closer. He tilted his head, studying the doe with the kind of focus I recognized—the look of someone who’d gone hungry more often than not. “From Eldhaven?”
“Yes.”
“My ma says Eldhaven folk are strange. Says you don’t follow the Flame proper.”
I glanced up at him. “Your ma sounds like she has opinions.”
He grinned, gap-toothed and guileless. “She does. Says it’s why the gods don’t bless your village with much. Says that’s why your women don’t marry right, either.”
I stiffened.
There it was. The thing people whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear. Why isn’t she married yet? What’s wrong with her? She’s too wild and sharp-tongued. Spends too much time in the woods like some kind of—
“Tell your ma,” I said evenly, “that the gods can keep their blessings if it means we don’t have to burn babies.”
The boy’s grin vanished. He took a step back, eyes going wide.
“You... you can’t say that.”
“I just did.”
“But—”
“Go home, kid.”
He hesitated, then turned and bolted, his footsteps echoing off the walls as he disappeared around a corner.
I let out a breath and looked down at the doe.
Now what?
I could wait. Sit here until the butcher comes back, however long that took. But the thought of staying in this town—this tomb—for hours made my skin crawl.
Or I could haul the doe back to Eldhaven and hope Garrik would take her for a halfway reasonable price.
Neither option was good.
I bent to hoist the doe back onto my shoulders, grimacing as the weight settled across my neck.
Get out of here, Eira. Now.
The walk back to Eldhaven took longer than it should have. My legs were tired, my shoulders ached, and the weight of the doe seemed to grow heavier with every step. By the time the village came into view—a scattering of small timber houses nestled in a valley between two forested hills—the sun was high overhead, and my stomach was growling loud enough to wake the dead.
I made my way to the house I shared with my father, a squat little building with a thatched roof and a chimney that leaked smoke no matter how many times we patched it. The door was ajar, which meant he was awake.
“Father?” I called, nudging the door open with my boot.
“In here.”
I found him sitting by the fire, a wool blanket draped over his lap despite the warmth from the hearth. He looked older than he had a week ago—was it possible there was more gray in his beard, more lines around his eyes? The cough that had plagued him all autumn was worse; I could hear it in the rasp of his breathing.
He looked up as I came in, and his weathered face split into a grin.
“You got one.”
“I did.” I let the doe slide off my shoulders onto the table with more force than necessary. “For all the good it did me.”
His grin faded. “What happened?”
I told him. All of it. The empty streets, the woman in the veil, the child they’d killed and called it mercy.
By the time I finished, my father’s expression had gone hard—and something else. Disdain.
“The Ritual of the Blotted Flame,” he said quietly, wagging his head back and forth.
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Everyone’s heard of it. Most just don’t talk about it.” He coughed, harsh and wet, and reached for the cup of water beside his chair. “It’s an old law, Eira. Older than you or me. Older than this village.”
“That doesn’t make it right.“
“No,” he agreed, his voice rough. “It doesn’t.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the fire crackling between us. But I could see the tension in his body, the way his hands gripped the arms of the chair like he was holding himself steady.
“What will you do with the doe?” he asked finally, not quite meeting my eyes.
I looked at the carcass, then at him. “Garrik will take her. He’ll cheat me, of course, but it’s better than nothing.”
He nodded slowly, still not looking at me. “Be careful, girl. Times like these... people get nervous. Start looking for someone to blame.”
“For what?”
“For anything.” He finally met my eyes, and there was something in his gaze—something worried, almost terrified—that I didn’t understand. “Just... be careful. Keep your head down. Don’t draw attention.”
I wanted to ask what he meant. Why a dead royal baby in Frostmar should make me need to be careful in Eldhaven. But the cough took him again, rattling through his chest like stones in a barrel, and by the time it passed, he looked so exhausted I didn’t have the heart.
“Get some rest,” I said instead, my throat tight. “I’ll take care of the doe.”
He nodded and closed his eyes, and I left him there by the fire.
As I walked out into the cold, I couldn’t shake the look in his eyes.
He’d been afraid.
Not for himself.
For me.
So... what do you think?
This is just the beginning. Eira’s about to be kidnapped by The Scorched Heir (a man cursed by the gods, searching for her for 23 years), dragged to a cave beneath the World Tree, and discover she has magic she never knew existed.
And that’s just Act 1.
If you’re intrigued, you can pre-order the eBook here. If you have thoughts, hit reply—I read every single one.
Thanks for being here. ❤️
Tracy