I don’t normally do promotional posts here, but E. Catherine Tobler is a dear friend and a wonderful writer (also, I do work for Masque Books but I would say those things anyhow!) and she has given me an exclusive excerpt from her new book, Watermark.

If you like what you read here, you can pop over to her place and in exchange for telling her who your favorite fairy is, you’ll be entered to win a digital copy of the book.  Sounds like a totally fair deal to me–just don’t eat any cake she might offer you. She’s very tricky when it comes to cake.

Watermark, E. Catherine Tobler

 “Do something!”

While I knew what I had witnessed—this was how we Unseelie ate a thing properly, how we took even our own kind apart until nothing remained—I had no idea what might be done for Daniel. Not until I touched him.

I came to his side, touched his arm, and found I knew how to seal off the glamour that poured from him and would leave him starving. The flow of his glamour was strangely warm and I closed it off, the way one would lick an envelope shut to keep the contents inside. The way Finn had ripped the bean-sidhe apart—that was how I closed Daniel back up, piece by piece, until he breathed easier.

Finn had not moved.

I moved slowly, like a river tracking a new path over the ground. This was also half familiar to me, and when my cold fingers slid up his arms, it became wholly familiar. I knew the paths inside him, knew where the water needed to go. I reached for these spaces, drenching drought-broken earth until he sputtered, until his head snapped up. His skin ran sepia, the hint of grand horns curling above his head, and then he was solidly human once more. Eyes closed, he lifted his head.

Without thinking, I licked his mouth. I could feel the grit of sugar there, but it tasted burnt. It tasted like his beating heart, running harder with the bean-sidhe’s stolen glamour inside. The bitterness fueled me the way I knew it did Finn. His hands closed around my arms and he held me until he could open his eyes, until he could breathe steady and true.

If you need to know what happens next, you know where to go.