The Crossing

Some heirlooms should never be handed down…

College was supposed to be the start of a great adventure for Susan Cole and her best friend, Mia Randolph. Instead, one year after graduation, Susan is back in her small hometown, running the family store after her father’s untimely death. Mia slunk home, too, when her career failed to launch and her relationship blew up.

Now Susan’s reclusive uncle, the last of her family, has died. Abandoned at birth, Susan only had her adopted father and uncle to rely on, and their deaths are a heavy blow.

But as Susan starts to sift through the cabin her uncle left behind, she discovers an unexpected inheritance awaiting her: a peculiar sword. Now that she’s touched it, the sword won’t leave her side.

And it attracts otherworldly monsters like a magnet.

If Susan doesn’t want to live in the woods and slay ravenous horrors every night, she’ll need help freeing herself from the family curse. With Mia along for the ride, Susan is about to discover her little town’s massive secret…and maybe a few secrets about herself.

No one ever said questing would be simple…

All Susan Cole wanted was for someone to free her from the cursed sword she inherited. Now she’s hiding far from home, on the run from her filicidal mother. Her friends are stuck with her, sucked into a larger problem than any of them signed up to face. Complicating matters, Susan has newly acquired powers she’s barely begun to explore—not to mention she’s the rightful crown princess of a kingdom she didn’t know existed three weeks ago.

Oh, and the cursed sword imprisons an elemental, who’s been trapped in constant pain for centuries.

If no one is willing to free Susan, then she’ll have to free herself and her elemental partner. All she needs to do is destroy the monsters the sword was forged to kill…who come from the Outside, a place from which no explorer has ever returned. No biggie.

But one way or another, Susan needs answers.

Even if that means a journey far beyond the edges of the map…

She’s new to this princess gig…

Learning to run a kingdom wasn’t part of Susan Cole’s—now Susan Fulquir’s—career plan. Muddling through foreign languages, frustrating her tutors, and squaring off against tightly laced dresses would be complicated enough without throwing in the slight issue of Susan’s frosty relationship with her mother. Not only has Susan exposed Erianthe’s lies, but she’s also supplanted her favored half brother in the line to the throne of Daril.

Susan’s greatest ally is a surprise: Terj, who, though having regained his freedom, remains close to her. While she wants him to be happy, she dreads the day he finally takes his leave, as her feelings toward the elemental have shifted far from mere camaraderie.

But Susan’s existence has political ramifications beyond Daril. When Erianthe signed her own marriage treaty, it was expected that one of her Cirivanti husband’s children would rule after her. Now unable to uphold the terms, and desperate to keep Cirivant happy, Erianthe proposes another marriage—Susan’s.

If Susan refuses…well, Erianthe has other options.

And when it comes to the child the queen has twice failed to kill, nothing is off the table.