Marked By Books: Desecration Blog Tour: Excerpt & GIVEAWAY!!!

Hello again, everyone! It's mostly been Gabby up here lately, and I hope you've enjoyed seeing her back again as much as I have! That being said, I'm really glad to be back and even more excited to announce my return with Desecration: The Wizard Queen at Sixteen. I haven't read it yet, but trust me, I will! I can't wait!

Desecration: The Wizard Queen at Sixteen by Hadley Holt

In a hidden world of wizards where only men hold the power of magic, one girl arises with the power to change everything, if she isn’t killed first…

Adriana Victoriana Evangelista (Addie), daughter to the High Chancellor of the Wizard’s Council, has always been the perfect wizard girl. She never questions why men possess magical powers and women have no power at all, magical or otherwise. Male wizards blend into the modern human world, leading huge corporations while wizard women are sequestered away.

On her sixteenth birthday, Addie discovers she possesses magic. Under wizard law, she is a desecration. An ancient prophecy surrounds the emergence of a girl magic-wielder, the wizard queen, who is destined to bring about the downfall of the wizard-kin.

Addie has long had a forbidden crush on a human boy who lives in the wizard stronghold, Rory Devlin. As she delves deeper into the dangerous mysteries surrounding her own destiny, she suspects Rory might be more than just human.

Addie’s fate sends her straight into the path of a powerful and evil sorcerer, but the worst danger of all may come from right inside her own home.

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Hadley Holt, author of paranormal, and fantasy YA (Young Adult) has always loved to write. She also nurtures an incurable fascination with all things supernatural and fantastical. From a young age, she imagined stories about dragons, wizards, witches, ghosts, shape-shifters, vampires, and other magical creatures. As life often does, it blessed Hadley with family - a hunky husband and amazing children, and with family came a rewarding career. Hadley spent many years in the not-so-magical world of finance and mortgage banking, but the stories were always there in the back of her mind, demanding to be set free.

Thanks to the housing market crash, Hadley finally realized her dreams. She now breathes life into her magical tales of reluctant young heroes finding their inner power to stand up against terrible creatures and even more terrible odds.

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I sat in my Familiars’ Nutrition class, waiting for the last bell. At each desk, a 3D holographic lesson illustrated the various ways to address the dietary choices of wizards’ familiars.

I was momentarily afraid I would fail my finals, because I hadn’t paid any attention in this class or my household budget class. And forget about Early Wizard Development; I couldn’t remember a word the teacher had said about handling toddler boys and their burgeoning magic.

“Who can tell me whether a weasel is a carnivore, an omnivore, or an herbivore?” Madame Rossini asked.

As usual, Lucia Amador raised her hand, wearing a serene smile while she waited for her name to be called.

Madame Rossini sighed as she glanced around the room. “Would anyone else like to answer?”

But no one else lifted their hand. Why did they need to? Lucia always answered.

Poor Lucia. She sat behind me, and I turned around to look at her. Today, in particular, it felt somehow important. I searched hard for the old Lucia in her eyes, for the girl who used to be the class clown with the biting humor, who used to glamour hot pink and neon green streaks into her hair, and who never ever backed down from confronting a bully. I couldn’t find even the tiniest remnant of the Lucia I’d known.

Earlier this year, Lucia had finally done the unthinkable: she’d fallen for a norm servant and hadn’t even tried to hide it. Her parents caught the two of them making out and shortly after that, Lucia disappeared from school for a week. When she returned, she wasn’t Lucia anymore. She was a model wizard girl, courtesy of the council’s retraining program.

Thinking of the old Lucia always made me think about my own dark secret. I had a crush on a norm, a human boy I’d known for most of my life. I knew I could never act on my feelings; no one could ever know how I felt about Rory Devlin. But I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts; when I least expected it, his face would pop into my mind. I’d envision the wide dazzling smile that reached all the way to his amethyst eyes, making me long for something I couldn’t even put a name to.

“Okay, Lucia?” Madame Rossini relented.

Her voice brought my attention back to Lucia.

“The weasel is a true carnivore,” Lucia said robotically. “It’s not an omnivore and there is some argument as to whether omnivore is even a valid classification.”

Instead of engaging Lucia in a discussion on that point, Madame Rossini simply said, “Thank you, Lucia.” And with that she gave up on further class participation and went back to her lecture while the holograms continued to project on each desk.