We are thrilled to be releasing the cover for Leslie Vedder’s The Severed Thread, which is the sequel to The Bone Spindle, along with an excerpt to make you even more excited!
Releasing on February 7th 2023, The Severed Thread is now available to pre-order, so read on to discover the synopsis, stunning cover illustrated by Fernanda Suarez and designed by Jessica Jenkins, and an excerpt!
Clever, bookish Fi and her brash, ax-wielding partner Shane are back in this action packed sequel to the bestselling The Bone Spindle, the gender-flipped Sleeping Beauty retelling, perfect for fans of Sorcery of Thorns and The Cruel Prince.
Fi has awakened the sleeping prince, but the battle for Andar is far from over. The Spindle Witch, the Witch Hunters, and Fi’s own Butterfly Curse all stand between them and happily ever after.
Shane has her partner’s back. But she’s in for the fight of her life against Red, the right hand of the Spindle Witch who she’s also, foolishly, hellbent on saving.
Briar Rose would do anything to restore his kingdom. But there’s a darkness creeping inside him—a sinister bond to the Spindle Witch he can’t escape.
All hopes of restoring Andar rest on deciphering a mysterious book code, finding the hidden city of the last Witches, and uncovering a secret lost for centuries—one that just might hold the key to the Spindle Witch’s defeat. If they can all survive that long…
Set in a world of twisted fairytales, The Severed Thread combines lost ruins, ride-or-die friendships, and heart-pounding romance.
EXCERPT
Shane walked side by side with Fi, listening to the watery echoes of their footsteps bouncing down the smooth cavern walls as they moved deeper in. The musty air of the tunnels was cold and stale. Fi slipped her jacket back on with a shiver.
The forge was a warren of passages, with dozens of openings cutting away into the dark. The Paper Witch said most of them let out somewhere in the Narrows, and as long as they kept traveling in a straight line, they should come out in the right spot. That was one more should than Shane was comfortable with, wandering through a creaky ruin held together by thousand-year-old magic. Trickles of dust rained down on their heads, and she could hear the distant rumble of rocks shifting deeper in. She had a feeling this ruin was just itching to bury somebody alive.
Briar walked at the head of the line, his light magic blazing in his hand like white fire. Grudgingly, Shane had to admit her partner was right—the prince could be useful from time to time. Of course, he’d be a lot more useful if they were walking right behind him, but Fi kept stopping to inspect the iron archways that carved a path through the mountain like a massive metal spine. As far as Shane could tell, every arch was identical to the one ten feet in front of it. But try telling a historian that.
“Be careful,” the Paper Witch called back. “The floor drops out quite suddenly here.”
Shane nudged Fi forward with her elbow, not as gently as she had the first three times. Where Briar and the Paper Witch had stopped, the stone walls suddenly peeled back and the tunnel opened out into a vast hollow cavern.
Now Shane could see the Ironworks. Smelting furnaces and crumbling chimneys black with scorch marks towered over them in the gloom, the long trenches for carrying water and molten metal cut right into the stone. At her feet, a deep pit plunged into the floor, revealing a spiderweb of underground tunnels glinting with carts and pulleys on rusted chains.
It reminded Shane of the great smelting mine in Rockrimmon. The mine was somewhere her father had forbidden her to go as a child—so naturally she’d gone there all the time, dragging Shayden with her down one of the old coal chutes and coming back soot-streaked from head to toe. Grandmother always threatened to grab her by her ankles and dunk her in the pond headfirst. But Shane liked the way it felt to stand deep inside the earth, surrounded by the noise and the heat. The forge felt alive: the bellows like lungs, the bubbling liquid iron running like thick blood in molded veins, the clang of the metalsmith’s hammer pounding like a heartbeat.
This place was long dead. A burned-out smell lingered in Shane’s throat, and the pits had been picked clean, nothing left but a boneyard of creaky gears and rusted mechanisms. The crystals bristling along the walls glowed with otherworldly light—just one of those little reminders that she was standing in a Witch ruin. Huge iron archways stretched across the ceiling like a cage of massive ribs.
“It’s magnificent,” Fi breathed, taking a careless step forward. Shane grabbed the back of her jacket before she could step right into the mine shaft. Magnificent was definitely going to be her partner’s last word one day.
“Only you would say that.” Shane felt more like she was standing in a hollowed-out corpse. She touched the battered handle of an old crank, and the whole thing crumpled into a rusty pile at her feet, the springs squealing. Fi shot her a look like she’d done it on purpose. “You sure this is a shortcut, not a death trap?” Shane asked.
The Paper Witch gestured to the ceiling. “The magic engraved into the iron archways is very strong. As long as the runes are intact, the cavern will hold.”
“You hope.” Shane was starting to think they should have taken their chances with the Witch Hunters. She’d known a lot of Witches, and they all put too much stock in magic—especially crusty old magic nobody had been upkeeping.
“I think my sister told me about this place once.” Briar craned his head back in awe. “It’s where the ruby in Aurora’s crown came from, right?”
The Paper Witch nodded. “According to legend, it was discovered by a great scholar of magic who lived in Aurora’s time. He came here looking for secret veins of magic deep within the earth itself. In the core of the mountain, he found a ruby of matchless quality. Before it was carved into a rose and set into the queen’s crown, it was known as the Hollow Heart of the Hills.”
That was downright creepy—to Shane, anyway. Fi just looked more fascinated.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this scholar,” she said excitedly. Shane could practically see her flipping pages in her mental library. “What was his name?”
The Paper Witch shook his head. “Unfortunately, that information is lost to time. The scholar disappeared, along with all of his research.”
Fi looked disappointed. But Shane wasn’t surprised. The kind of person who crawled around in the bowels of Witch mines prying out rubies with ominous names was just asking to go missing.
The footing got more treacherous as they traversed the forge. Shanks of rusted metal cracked like brittle bone under Shane’s boots. They were only about halfway across when Fi stopped so abruptly Shane nearly crashed right into her and sent them both tumbling to their death. A chasm the length of the entire cave stretched in front of them, at least ten feet across at the narrowest point. Shane kicked a small rock into it and watched it fall, banging against the side on the way down. She never heard it hit the bottom.
“Is there another way?” Briar asked, glancing around.
“I don’t think we’ll need one. Look.” Fi pointed at the far ledge.
Shane squinted through the dim. Her partner had spotted an old, rusted drawbridge, so narrow it was more like a long iron plank, that looked as though it was meant to be lowered over the gap. Too bad they were on the wrong side to use it.
Briar considered the chains holding up the bridge. A little curl of magic swirled in his hand. “I could try to knock it loose—”
“No!” Shane and Fi said at the same time. Shane made a face. “Don’t start throwing magic in here—who knows what you’d hit.” The last thing they needed was Briar bringing the ceiling down.
Fi peered up at the tangle of ancient pulleys hung from a long crossbar. “If I could get my rope around the windlass, I might be able to swing across.”
“I think you mean we can swing across,” Shane corrected. “Unless you think you can pull that thing down yourself.” The winch at the base of the bridge looked decidedly rusty. “You’re the brains and I’m the muscle, remember?”
Fi rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.” She was already grabbing for the rope at her belt, sizing up the distance across the gap. The Paper Witch pulled Briar back to make room. Fi swung in a tight circled and released. The rope sailed out toward the bridge, the dull ring clanging as it bounced off the windlass. Fi yanked it back.
“Second time’s the charm?” Shane suggested.
“I thought it was third time,” Fi muttered as she wound up again. She spun the rope even faster, and Shane’s guts clenched a little as her partner’s boot slid dangerously close to the edge.
This time the metal ring wound all the way around the iron bar, crossing over itself as the rope snagged tight in the chains. Fi tugged gently, and then harder, turning to Shane with her eyebrow raised.
“Ready?” she asked as Shane got a good grip on her waist.
“Be careful,” Briar said. Shane had a feeling she wasn’t the one he was worried about, but she wasn’t taking it personally.
“Ready,” Shane told her partner, sucking in a breath in anticipation. Then they leapt over the edge together. Shane’s stomach did a backflip in the second they sailed across the drop, suspended over nothing. Then the far ledge was under her, and she let go, her boots crunching over loose gravel as she stumbled a few steps to absorb the momentum. Fi landed awkwardly, twisting to keep hold of her rope and yank it down after them. The ring nearly clocked Shane in the face.
“Are you guys okay?” Briar called.
Shane waved him off, following Fi as she bent to inspect the winch. The mechanism was smeared with dark grease, and there was a healthy supply of rust crawling up the chains.
Fi gestured with a thumb. “All yours.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shane muttered, grabbing the grimy handle. Her back muscles protested as the winch screeched, the old gears turning painfully slowly. “So far, those Witches really aren’t pulling their weight.”
Fi chuckled. The chains rattled and the bridge shuddered, creaking down inch by tortured inch.
Shane glanced across the chasm to find the prince still staring at them. Well, at Fi. There had been a lot of that—the staring—since they came down from the tower, and not all of it from Briar. She shot her partner a look, coaxing the winch another handspan. Fi’s account of how she broke Briar’s sleeping curse had been suspiciously light on details, but Shane had noticed the new distance between them. Then again, considering the monstrous thing Briar Rose had become in the Forest of Thorns, maybe a little distance wasn’t such a bad thing.
Not that Fi knew about that, as far as she could tell. It wasn’t really her place to blab, but she hated keeping secrets from her partner. It made her itchy all over.
Shane cleared her throat. “So, uh . . . has Briar talked to you about, you know . . . anything?”
She cringed at how awful that came out. Luckily, Fi was too busy being defensive to notice.
“What would we have to talk about?” she asked, her voice clipped.
Well, that was ridiculous. Even from Fi keep-your-nose-out-of-my-business Nenroa. “Gee, I don’t know. Dark curses, evil Witches . . . whatever happened between you in that tower. I assume you kissed him, since he’s awake.”
“Is any of this helping you pull the bridge down faster?” Fi bit out, her arms crossed and her cheeks a little pink.
That wasn’t a no. Shane cranked the handle, gritting her teeth against the strain as the bridge dropped another few feet. “So you kissed him. And then . . .”
“And then we mutually agreed to work together, for the good of Andar,” Fi finished blandly.
Shane snorted. “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I remember that fairy tale.”
What a pretty cover! The lead looks so fierce.