It's weekend, and time for more Rainbow Snippets! The Rainbow Snippets group on Facebook asks its members to share six sentence snippets from their work each weekend. Check out the group's Facebook page to read all the snippets and add lots of great books to your TBR. You'll find all sorts of books with the common thread that the main character identifies as LGBTQ.
I thought I'd share a few snippets this month to celebrate the fourth publishing anniversary of A Dance of Water and Air, the first book in my Elemental Magicae series. I wrote this series as a challenge to myself to write a series that would be complete within those two books. (It is, but I'm probably going to write more in this world. Because of course.) In this book, Edmund is a demisexual prince whose father arranges a marriage for him with the queen of a neighboring country to create an alliance. However, Edmund soon finds himself falling for the queen's brother, Arden (who is bisexual and transgender). When Edmund is framed for an attempted assassination of the queen, he and Arden realize there is a lot more going on than they thought, and they go on the run, hoping to figure out a way to save Edmund and their countries and for them to be together. In this snippet, Edmund and Arden demonstrate their magic for each other—Edmund has Water magic and Arden Air, and by this point, they've spent a lot of time in their growing friendship talking about magic.
Arden’s attention was pulled slowly to the river as waves rose—but only in the area in front of them, and only in gentle, even swells. Then the water surged up from the river and swirled in the air, too perfectly to be anything except magic. Watching the even motion was soothing, peaceful. And then everything went back to normal between one blink of the eye and the next.
“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Edmund said.
“It was lovely.”
Edmund smiled, open and honest and almost enough to break Arden’s heart.
“Now, you. Show me something.” Arden bit back a teasing, and wholly inappropriate, reply. “All right.”
It was hardly work at all to feel the currents of Air around him, to seek out the threads of magic within them. It took barely more than a thought to move the Air, to create the playful little breeze that picked up the colorful leaves and to make it swirl around Edmund, to ruffle his hair and tug at his clothes.
Arden wished the sight of Edmund’s sparkling eyes, the sound of his delighted laugh, didn’t give him so much pleasure.