The Night Princess by Grace Martin

Author:Grace Martin [Martin, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

Keep reading for an excerpt from my next novel, Daughter of a Captive God, the first book in The Author’s Daughter Series. Set in the same universe as The Night Princess, it follows Katie as she learns that not everything is as it seemed and the world was more dangerous than she ever knew.

CHAPTER ONE

When I was twenty-three, my Dad ran away from home. Given that he was living with my mother I was sympathetic. Still, I had to go home to help Mum, no matter how I felt about it. That’s what you do. I spent my first day back home talking to the police and spending a terrible, terrible time in the morgue identifying a body that looked enough like my father to fool the casual observer.

That night I lay awake, upstairs in the guesthouse in my parents’ backyard. I planned my Dad’s funeral. While I was at it I planned my own funeral and listened to the house settle.

I’d never slept in the Guesthouse before. It was a very old building and to give my Dad credit, he’d renovated it thoroughly. It had a big bedroom upstairs with an en-suite with a lounge room and a kitchenette downstairs. They say old buildings make noises as they settle, though you’d think they had enough time to settle in the last century and a half.

There was another noise. That wasn’t the house settling.

I swung my legs out of bed. Silly me, I’d packed clothes and soap and deodorant. I hadn’t packed a weapon — not that it would do much good, since I didn’t know how to use one. Mum had moved all my toys from my old room into the Guesthouse with me, so I picked out the one I could most easily use as a club.

A hobby horse, with a plush fake-fur horse’s head on top of a stick might sound like something out of a horror novel, but it’s an actual thing. When you’re five and pretending you’re a knight on horseback it serves well enough as a horse. Now it served well enough as a pointy stick.

I crept downstairs, quiet, quiet, the hobby horse raised in my hand.

There was nothing there. An empty room, kitchen benches clean and tidy, the bank of storage cupboards that lined the back wall… wait. One of the doors wasn’t quite shut.

There was another thump. You couldn’t miss it. It was inside the cupboard. I braced myself, hobby horse at the ready. The cupboard doors bumped slightly, hiccoughed almost. They burst open with a loud crash.

I took stumbling steps backwards as a slavering, bestial thing shouldered its way out of the splintered remains of the cupboard doors.

It was enormous, looming over me, a Thing of leathery skin and teeth and claws and its breath tasted of things long dead. It lunged towards me and knocked me to the ground, claws digging in to my arm and drawing blood. I screamed in pain and fear and rolled away, the force of my movement ripping my own flesh on the monster’s claws.

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