Etched In Ink by indie author Corinne Price follows Sybil Wyntres as she struggles with the aftermath of acquiring powers. Powers her people are born with, but ones she was granted only after a horrific accident as a child that destroyed her friend and left her scarred.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Etched In Ink by Corinne Price, which releases on
Everything Sybil Wyntres believed is a lie. The rune etched into her body, the magic she can’t control, even the order she once trusted. None of it is what it seems. Forced back into the Bastion she barely escaped, Sybil is sent across the fractured lands of Crae Vost with an ancient enchanter whose motives are as obscured as the truth she seeks. As whispers of the Void spread and their horrors grow less containable, Sybil begins to uncover a terrifying possibility: the enemy may not be what she was taught to fear.
Far beneath the world above, Raekin has lost everything. Dragged back into the Alpstraum by the noose he thought he had loosened, he is once again bound to the wire that broke him. All because he chose her. Now, marked by failure and forced into obedience, Raekin is sent to hunt the one person who may be able to unleash the nightmare of the Void onto the continent.
As their paths pull them toward the same unraveling mystery, Sybil and Raekin race against each other and the forces that control them to uncover the truth behind the tome that tore them apart. But Etched in Ink is a world built on control and cruelty: knowledge is dangerous. And choosing the wrong side may cost them not just their lives, but the lives of those living on the surface.
EXCERPT
Everything hurt. The slightest twinge in his muscles, in his skin, and he felt his stomach twist, seizing against sharp pains. They had carved him all over again. He’d felt every blade, every flame, every claw. He wouldn’t know how ruinous the damage was until he got out of the Alpstraum.
If.
The pulse through his veins throbbed in tandem with his bound wrists. Wrapped behind the post, the wire tight, still singing with the acrid tang of the magic wrought into the iron. The scars the wire had bitten into his skin so many years ago no doubt re-opened and raw. The smell of blood was more overpowering than the decay. It surrounded him like a thick miasma, invading every sense of his body.
Taunting him.
Because it was right there. Encompassing everything around him, covering him. And he couldn’t grab it. He could use it to break the wire. Could use it to tear apart the post. With it and the earth below him, he could crumble this cave down on his body, snuff out the breath from his lungs, and leave the pain behind. An easy out that had always lingered in the background, but one he chose to ignore, focusing instead on making those that hurt him pay.
If only he could get the barest grasp of his magic. Not with the runes engraved on the walls, not with the wire tight against his wrists, cutting all ties to his magic like a severed limb.
When the Void came to him, weapons and claws sharp and ready to cleave through his flesh, Raekin almost felt relief. A break in the monotony that endless isolation had created, his own mind trying to turn against him. Delusion and reality becoming one and the same.
Those whispered taunts and shadowed demons no longer fed on Raekin, their reach fading with time. No longer keeping him in a constant state of terror. They couldn’t remind him of the bloodshed derived from his own hands, nor needling him with the mistakes he had made. Because he already knew. Even their threats of became redundant and expected, falling on him like the drips of water from the ceiling. The nightmares tried so hard to haunt him, but everything in him felt too numb to raise a voice in return.
When all you have for company is the never-ending darkness, eventually the nothingness fades and nightmares start to parade through the empty chasm you are left with.
Regardless of his detachment, his body still shook. Still trembled under the waterlogged wrap around his eyes. The cold. The pain. The waiting. It built up over time. A separate voice that now screamed into the void, one that sounded terrifyingly like his own, but did not come from his throat.
The hard, cracked ground beneath him curved from years of Etched scrambling away from their tormentors. Remnants from the last visitor to his darkened cell amalgamating into a fetid puddle within the crevasse. The memory of it soaked into his brain much the same as the water slowly rotting his skin. A heavy, woolen rag had been draped over his face, head yanked back with such a force his neck cracked, water poured over the fabric while he choked. Drowning, but unable to die. Over and over and over and over—
Stop. Please stop.
He shifted his body. He had to. The movement of his pain from one extremity to the next was the only thing to signify that time was still passing. There was no world to him anymore, just the darkness of the fabric around his eyes. He knew there were torches that surrounded him, just out of reach. He saw them when the fabric was torn from his face, the light burning his eyes when Naz’Tak returned to goad, or gloat. He never asked questions. His underlings did that when they—
Drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning
—brought their bulky reptilian hide down this far. Always about Kreb. Always about her whereabouts. He stayed strong. He lied. Said he didn’t know. Didn’t know what had happened. Though his underlings were moronic, Naz’Tak certainly wasn’t. He’d seen what had happened. Seen the way Raekin had looked at Sybil. Raekin tried to shield her with his fury, mask it all behind a veil of anger and vengeance. But it hadn’t been enough. Naz’Tak had seen through it like a shoddy curtain.
Naz’Tak wouldn’t let that go so easily. But through all the torment, all the torture, Raekin was strong, defiant. Letting it wash over him as he held his tongue.
Until they cut it.
This excerpt is from Corinne Price’s new book “Etched In Ink.” Reprinted with permission from Corinne Price
