The Bookish Outsider: Excerpt & Giveaway: Chantress Fury

Monday 4 May 2015

Excerpt & Giveaway: Chantress Fury - Amy Butler Greenfield

Chantress Fury (Chantress Trilogy #3)
by Amy Butler Greenfield
288 pages
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: May 19th, 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Synopsis:

The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.

With a song, Lucy can control the wind and the water; she can bring castles and kingdoms to their feet. Since Lucy mastered her powers, King Henry has kept her close as he’s rebuilt England. She’s his best ally—and his workhorse. And now he’s called her to investigate attempted murder: His men claim they were almost killed on the Thames…by a mermaid. All Lucy can glean from the creature they’ve captured is a warning: The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.

And then the floods begin. Swaths of London are submerged as the people scramble to defend themselves against the water—and the monsters—that are flooding their streets. As mistrust of Lucy's magic grows, the king relies on Nat, Lucy's great love, to guide them through the storm. But Nat is cold and distant to Lucy. He swore his love only a year before, and now he calls her “stranger.”

Lucy is determined to defeat this powerful new magic alone if she must. But then she hears an eerie song within the water…can it mean that she’s not the last Chantress after all?

Sweepingly romantic and crackling with magic, Chantress Fury triumphantly concludes the powerful Chantress trilogy.

I looked at the mermaid, and she looked at me—and I gave myself over to listening.

At first I only heard the water in the barrel, and its vexation at being contained. Round and round it went, an endless circling melody. But then I caught a glimmer of something else: A chilling music that told me that something in the barrel felt hunted; something felt afraid. And it wasn’t the water.

Frustrated, I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the barrel. She was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t reach her, and I didn’t dare touch her, not when she was so frightened already....

The water in the barrel bobbled. As it washed over my fingertips, a wave of feeling washed over me, too: a bath of remorse so strong that it made me pull my hand from the water in shock.

The mermaid was sorry?

With a twist of her fins, she broke the surface again. Liquid streamed from her hair, and down over her skin. It took me a few moments to see that it wasn’t just seawater, but tears.

I touched the water again, and again the tide of remorse washed over me—remorse and pain and fear.

She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. I knew that now, without a doubt. And I knew something else, too: She was dying.

The gag wasn’t just cutting into her skin, and it wasn’t just stopping her from singing. It was suffocating her. The wadding had wound around her tongue, and now it was trailing down her throat, a little farther with every swallow…

Her panic felt like mine.

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Amy Butler Greenfield was a grad student in history when she gave into temptation and became a writer. Since then, she has become an award-winning author.

Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and later studied history at Williams College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oxford. She now lives with her family in England, where she writes, bakes double-dark-chocolate cake, and plots mischief.