Lines of Strength and Grace: Misfortune and Magic

By Kari Kilgore

Escaping Her Own Past

The new Baroness Dyna Bacalan faces constant change and adjustment.
Learning her role and home of Profant. Enjoying married life with her beloved husband.
But a mysterious voice from the past haunts her mind and threatens her happiness.
Will asking for help set Dyna free, or send her deeper into madness?

 

Also available in the collection Fantastic Side Trips: Side Characters Take Center Stage

 

An excerpt from Lines of Strength and Grace:
Taking the hardest step: asking for help

At moments like this, Dyna wished for a bit less understanding and freedom, and more of the clear knowledge of what was expected of her that she'd had growing up. Yes, she'd chafed under all the rules, especially after she met Hildar.

But she'd had fairly easy choices then as well. Do what she should, or accept the consequences of refusing. Which generally resulted in her doing what she should have in the first place.

All the while, she got precious little practice in deciding for herself without considering whether rebellion or even protest was worth it.

"Since you brought me here," she said, "you must trust this woman's abilities. So I shall at least hear what she has to say."

Berga lowered her head in the closest thing to a bow she'd offered as they walked.

"As you like. I'll accompany you for introductions, then follow your wishes about whether you'd prefer me to stay or go."

Berga took several steps before Dyna got her own feet moving.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201090012

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Lines of Strength and Grace

For everyone who makes the difficult choice

to leave the past in the past.

LINES OF STRENGTH AND GRACE

A MISFORTUNE AND MAGIC STORY

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

Once in a while, when she felt particularly homesick, the newlywed Baroness Dyna Bacalan fought back a strong urge to disrupt the clean, straight lines in her new residence.

The great desert city of Profant boasted a remarkable number of those lines. More than she’d ever imagined possible before she arrived.

Unlike her home along the warm Wrynath Sea—no, not her home anymore, her childhood home, near the even larger city of Casai far to the south—the unending orderliness of Profant began with the streets.

She walked along one of them now, surrounded by low conversation and the soft crunching of small brown gravels under the feet of people and a scattering of colorful landhorses, with people and landhorses alike pulling low wooden wagons with boxy white canvas covers.

The gravels emphasized the long, straight lines, cutting through red stone buildings that stretched all the way to towering city walls made of the same squared-off stones.

Dyna tried even harder to ignore her childish desire to kick the clean edges into disorderly rebellion. That sort of behavior was hardly appropriate for a woman who’d not only reached her twenty-first year, but would surely soon become a mother herself.

Or at least she likely could, if she ever decided she was ready.

The buildings and the city walls were all exact lines and perfect right angles, just like the streets. No matter what size the buildings were, from modest houses to cozy merchant establishments to spacious offices for guards or city officials, all the way up to the baronial residence that took up four looming stories and several blocks in the center of the city.

Box upon box upon box, line upon line upon intersecting right angle.

Hardly any windows broke up the solid mass of red blocks, not with so much heat and dust sneaky and determined to find their way inside. Only thick doors made of pale wood, the grain twisted into fascinating patterns.

With no way for potential customers to peek inside, the merchants all supplied waist-high stalls with colorful awnings in front of their shops to display their wares.

Of course the awnings and stalls were neat and sharp in both construction and contents.

She’d been horrified at the lack of windows at first, coming from a land where openings of all kinds were vital, and carefully positioned to catch the sea breeze at every opportunity.

Then