King’s Hazard, Fifth Dragon, Book IV

Hello, everybody! Renee Robyn has created another stunning image for the newest book in my Fifth Dragon fantasy series. King’s Hazard is number four and introduces a pint-sized character who causes over-sized issues for White Raven and King Dorian. For those who’d like to view Renee’s stunning website of digital photography and composite art, here’s the link: https://www.reneerobyn.com/

For a sneak preview of the new book, I’m attaching the first chapter below. Raven is still practicing her magic, but all is not perfect in her new world - and magic is much harder to control than she’d ever imagined! Join her as she stumbles through mastering her craft and juggles the results of magic gone awry!

Excerpt from King’s Hazard, Book IV

Chapter 1

“Magic beans, my ass!” I grumbled and poked at a pot filled with bare soil. After five days there still wasn’t a leaf to be seen. The wrinkly-faced gnome, after pocketing my money, had assured me they’d sprout within four days. Since it’s hard to tell when you’re being hoodwinked on the floating island of Cumulos, I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover the beans were duds. They’d probably be more useful in soup.

A loud knock startled me, and after a final glance at the pot and scowling at my agricultural failure, I went to the door, wondering who it could be. Most of my visitors arrive via the balcony of my tenth-floor apartment since magical people don’t need elevators.

As I peered through the peephole, my stomach sank. A woman with shaggy red hair, thick glasses, and a nervous tic stood in the hallway accompanied by a ten-year-old boy who was the spitting image of her. Crap! Reg and his mother. Her name was Karen. Karen Clugg. If I were her, I’d change it. Almost anything would be better.

Perhaps I was being condescending. After all, my magical name is White Raven, and some people might find that odd. My human mother called me Cheryl James in order to help me fit into a world that didn’t fit me.

To get back to my visitors, Reg is a ten-year-old fester in my side. He’s round like Humpty Dumpty and constantly fills his face with crap that’s setting him on the road to obesity and diabetes. The kid’s convinced I’m a witch, and his fondest dream is to prove it to the world.

I groaned, pasted on a fake smile, and opened the door. “Good morning, Karen.” I looked down at the kid who licked protruding teeth as he scowled at me through his glasses. “Hi, Reg.”

Karen gave me a nervous smile. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss James, but I wonder if you’d help me with something?”

I’m suspicious of people who ask if I’ll help them before identifying the request. “Sure. What do you need?”

She put a hand on Reg’s shoulder. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but my son has gotten it into his head that you’re a witch. Perhaps it’s because you have such long black hair.”

My hair grows fast, and as it currently neared my thighs, I needed to get busy with the scissors. I raised my brows. “Really?”

“I know how silly it sounds, but mothers need to nip these sorts of fantastical ideas in the bud. Who knows what damage they could cause him in the future?”

I slid my gaze to Reg. In my opinion, he had bigger problems than believing his neighbour was a witch. I turned back to the woman. “I understand. How can I help?”

“His therapist thought if Reg spent some time with you he might realize how silly such ideas are.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “Eh?”

“I hope it’s not too much of an imposition, and I’d be happy to pay for your time. It’s just that it’s been almost a year, and he hasn’t outgrown this fixation.”

If she only knew how much I wished he’d outgrow his fixation too, but the little bloodhound was onto the fact I actually did have magical powers; in fact, I had all kinds of them. Unfortunately for me, he’d witnessed some of my more spectacular failures and had made it his goal in life to expose me to the gov’mint.

Reg stared up at his mother. “She is a witch, Mom! How do you know she won’t shove me into an oven?”

Karen flushed. “Do you see what I mean? I’m at my wit’s end!”

I sent an irritated glance into the olive-green eyes of the monster and turned back to his mother. “What did you have in mind?”

“Could he spend a couple of hours with you? I realize we don’t know each other that well, but you’ve lived in this building for nearly ten years, and you seem stable.”

Karen and Reg lived in the apartment below mine, and I could be quietly cutting up bodies for all she knew. “I don’t know much about kids,” I said. “I’m an only child myself.”

“There you go! You have something in common!” She pushed Reg at me. “I’ll be home all afternoon. If you have any problems, call me.” She handed me a torn slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it and turned to Reg. “Now, you behave yourself! I’ve had about enough of this ‘witch’ nonsense!” Then she trotted down the hall towards the elevator without a backward glance.

“Mooooom!” wailed Reg. As the elevator doors closed behind his mother, the kid glared up at me. “So, what are you gonna do, eat me?”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve seen the garbage you put in your face.” I stepped aside. “Let’s see if we can manage to survive a quiet couple of hours. If you hadn’t told your mom I was a witch, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Reg peered through the door before stepping inside, and I motioned for him to take a stool at the breakfast counter. “Have a seat. Would you like a sandwich?” He glanced at my broom which was parked in an umbrella stand next to the balcony. “And if you touch that broom, I’ll beat you with it.”

“It’s against the law to assault people!”

He was going to make a great lawyer someday. “Don’t worry. I’d never take a chance on breaking it.”

Reg hoisted himself onto a stool and watched me plug in a kettle. “Do you have soda?”

“Only idiots drink soda. I have water and . . .” I looked in the fridge. “I have fruit juice, which isn’t much better. I might have a cup of sugar somewhere with the same nutritional value.”

“I like soda.”

“No doubt, but you’ll have to go a couple of hours without it.” I plunked a box of fake strawberry juice on the counter. I didn’t normally have such a thing in my apartment, but a childhood friend had stopped by earlier in the week and brought something to mix with the mickey of vodka in her purse.

I found organic bread in the freezer, popped a couple of slices into the toaster, and dug out butter, cheese, lettuce, and cucumbers. At Reg’s look of horror, I said, “It’s called real food.”

“Don’t you have pizza?”

I find my magical abilities are affected when I eat other than organic – and not in a good way. “Pizza isn’t on the menu. Sandwiches are. You can eat them or not.”

He pursed his lips. “You don’t know much about kids.”

“I told your mother I didn’t. Don’t expect this little visit to be a picnic. Maybe you shouldn’t have told her I was a witch.”

“But you are a witch!”

“No, Reg, I’m not. There are other magical beings besides witches. You should read more.”

“What are you then?”

It was time to shut up. “I’m your neighbour, and I live here like everybody else.”

I was halfway through building cucumber sandwiches when I heard a scraping sound from the living room. My heart stopped when I saw green vines squirming out of the pot in the corner – the magic beans that had so far refused to sprout. Son-of-a . . . Why the hell did they have to choose now to come to life?!

In a panic to keep Reg from noticing, I piled the remaining ingredients onto the bread, added the top slice, and smooshed them together. I slapped the sandwich onto a plate and opened the patio doors. “Bring your juice. We’ll sit on the balcony and talk about how I’m not a witch.”

After ensuring the kid was faced away from the room, I handed him a sandwich that looked like it had been made by a five-year-old. “Here you go.” Slices of cucumbers were sliding out, chunks of cheese hung from the side, and the lettuce leaves were too big. As the kettle whistled, I instructed a skeptical Reg to eat while I made tea.

As I skidded into the kitchen, I saw the vines were already a metre tall. Some climbed the trellis I’d sunk into the soil; others crawled over the edge of the pot seeking adventures of their own. How long could I hide this? The kid might be an unpleasant little sod, but his brain was razor sharp. I shot a glance at hm, but he was occupied trying to catch the cucumber slices falling onto his lap.

The enhanced growth spell I’d added to the beans seemed to have been a bit of overkill, and the plants were going nuts. If I didn’t get a handle on them, my living room would be a solid mass of vegetation before nightfall. As I gathered tea things, I muttered incantations under my breath.

In a worst-case scenario, I could call one of my magical friends to rescue me yet again, but I hated doing that. They already felt sorry enough for me. Having grown up in Western Canada, I hadn’t been trained in the use of my magical abilities as a child. Now I was playing catch-up. Hence, my effort to grow magic beans in my living room.

I mumbled something I’d learned from one of the spell books in the Cumulos library. It had had something to do with plants. To my horror, the vines turned yellow, then blue, a fluorescent red, then continued to rotate through the colours. Yikes! I’d made it worse!

Reg was still occupied with the sandwich, but I was running out of time. Maybe I could kill the vines by changing the soil into rock? It was worth a shot. I scribed a sigil in the air. As the soil hardened, the vines whipped into a frenzy. Now they were coloured, growing insanely fast, and thrashing around like they were in a tornado.

“I’ll be right out! Enjoy the cucumbers!”

In a frantic effort to find one that would work, I threw random spells around, and somehow the colours turned back to green and the vines slowed their thrashing as the rock turned back into soil, but they still grew at a crazy rate. Tendrils crept over the couch into the cushions. Time to get the kid out of there.

I stepped onto the balcony. “Um . . . tomorrow would be a better day for you to visit. I just remembered I was supposed to meet a friend this afternoon, and I’ll be late if I don’t get going. Could you run down and tell your mother?”

Reg brushed crumbs from a striped red tee shirt that clashed with his hair. “Can I take my juice?”

“Yes. Tell your mom I’m sorry, but we’ll have to do this another time.”

As Reg slid off his chair and headed to the door, I kept my body between him and the twisting vines. As he passed it, he glanced at my broom but didn’t try to grab it. He’d seen me fly on it on more than one occasion and knew what it was for, but he just couldn’t prove it – yet.

As I reached around him to open the door, he stopped dead, and I ground my teeth when I saw where he was looking. “Hey! That plant wasn’t there before!”

I got a familiar feeling in my stomach as I tried to salvage the situation. “Before what?”

“That plant wasn’t here a few minutes ago!” he repeated. “Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That plant has always been here.”

Before I could catch him, the kid darted into the living room and grabbed a vine. As he examined it, there was a flash of movement, and a thick creeper sucked onto his leg. Another caught his wrist and pulled tight. He started screaming, but the more he struggled, the more the vines were attracted to the motion. In seconds, he was on the floor bellowing at the top of his lungs.

If I didn’t do something fast, somebody was going to call the police. Perhaps if I generated a spell that reduced the lifeforce of living things, the plant would weaken long enough to let Reg go. Ignoring his frantic thrashing, I concentrated on the spell and felt a surge of relief when sparkling lights drifted from my fingertips to collect over the pot. The vines went limp, and with a sigh of exasperation, I untangled the greenery from Reg and helped him to his feet. How in hell was I going to explain this?

Reg was still screaming in a full-on panic. I grabbed him by the shoulders to keep him turned away from the pot as the vines shrank and sucked back into the soil. “Reg! Reg! Look at me!” When I finally got him to stand still, his eyes were wild. “Calm down! What are you doing? What happened?”

He pushed me away then stared at the empty pot. “Where . . . where are the vines? That plant grabbed me! You saw it!”

I glanced at the pot. “What plant would that be? You just started to scream and fell to the floor.” I would’ve felt bad for him if he wasn’t constantly trying to have me arrested by secret government agents.

His eyes darted between me and the pot, and I could see the realization take hold that he’d lost the battle. The wicked witch had won – again.

“You know,” I said, “we could be friends if you’d stop telling people I was an evil witch.”

“But you are!”

I sighed. “No, I’m not. There are lots of kinds of magic. Maybe you should study instead of demonizing people.”

“That plant tried to kill me!” He backed away from the pot. “And what does ‘demonize’ mean?”

“It means you believe I’m evil without checking to find out if it’s true.”

“All witches are evil.”

“I suppose your mother told you that.”

“Everybody knows it!”

I sighed again. “You should go home. Obviously, something in my apartment scares you.” I opened the door and shoved him through. “Have a nice day. We should do this again sometime.”

Before I could close the door, he turned to stare at the empty plant pot again. Unfortunately, at that moment, the vines recovered from my spell and shot from the soil to wave in the air.

Reg screamed and tore wildly down the hallway to the stairs. I shook my head as I closed and double-locked the door. Maybe his mother wouldn’t bring him back.

It was time for me to return to Cumulos anyway. Hiding in my apartment in Denver wasn’t going to resolve my confusion between the two men in my life. Dorian, my friend and newly-crowned king of the magical world of Altaria, was being pressured to take a queen, and I was in the running.

It would’ve been an easy decision if not for Valgren. As a Rider of Gaia, he exuded magic and sensuality as naturally as breathing – but he’d never be mine in the sense of a permanent mate. Although I like to think of myself as a modern woman, I find myself strangely adrift with that concept.

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, I’d returned to Denver to give myself time to sort out my feelings, but it’d been more than a month, and I was no closer to resolving the question than when I’d arrived. I might as well thrash through my issues on Cumulos. Besides, I needed Valgren to teach me to use my Rider skills before I caused serious damage to myself and/or others.

I glanced at the twisting vines that already covered my couch, sighed, and hoped I could neutralize them before they took over my apartment.