First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
- Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
- Finally… reveal the book!
Happy Friday! I hope you’ve all had brilliant weeks so far. The book I’m sharing this week is full of sapphic longing, fire wielding nuns and set in a richly built, mythical world.
“The new novice had been skulking at the edge of the garden for nearly a quarter hour. If he was trying to hide from her, he was doing a poor job of it.”
Ten years ago, Sephre left behind her life as a war hero and took holy vows to seek redemption for her crimes, wielding the flames of the Phoenix to purify the dead. But as corpses rise, a long-dead god stirs, and shadowy serpents creep from the underworld to hunt her, she has no choice but to draw on the very past she’s been trying so hard to forget.
Orphaned by the same war Sephre helped win, Yeneris has trained half her life to be the perfect spy, a blade slipped deep into the palace of her enemies. Undercover as bodyguard to Sinoe, a princess whose tears unleash prophecy, Yeneris strives to complete her true mission to recover the stolen bones of a saint. Sinoe’s prophecies may hold answers, but allying with the fiercely compassionate princess is perilous. Yeneris must find a way to balance her growing attraction for Sinoe with her duty to her people as they conduct a dangerous search for the source of the king’s power.
As Sephre investigates the signs of a looming apocalypse, she finds her beliefs tested by Nilos, a mercurial and charming agent of the serpent. He should be her enemy, but when Sephre is wrongly accused of heresy and desperate to rescue her innocent apprentice, she has no choice but to work with the enigmatic man. Together they embark on a treacherous quest, seeking answers in the labyrinthine underworld.
As gods are reborn and spirits destroyed, the world trembles on the edge of a second cataclysm. When the true enemy makes their bid for power, Yeneris must find a way to remain true to her full self and save both her mission and her heart. And Sephre must decide whether to be bound by her past, or to forge a better future, even if it means renouncing her vows and accepting a new and terrible power.
