08/18/2012
Marcy Kate Connolly (MarcyKate on QT) has signed with agent Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media.
My inspiration for it struck while I was trapped in gridlock traffic and late to meet friends one night last summer. I had nothing else to do but let my mind wander, and that’s when the first line (“I’ll never forget my first breath”) landed in my brain. I spent the rest of the rather long drive in to the city thinking about who would say that and why. Oddly enough, the first page I wrote that day hasn’t changed much.
Most people remember their first crush, first kiss, and first day of school. Kymera remembers none of that.
But she will never forget her first breath.
When Father recreates her from the parts of her broken body, the wings of a raven, the tail of serpent, and a cat’s razor-sharp vision, he gives her life without memories or pain.
But not without a mission.
Kymera knows who murdered her. A wizard in the city of Bryre who is sacrificing the girls of the countryside one by one. He is monstrous and now Father has created a monster to stop him.
Kymera sneaks into Bryre each night, rescuing the captive girls and doing her best to avoid the city’s human inhabitants. Then one night she meets Ren, the king’s page boy, and her resolve weakens. Her nightly missions take on a dual purpose—save the other girls and steal a few moments with the boy who has yet to see her without her cloak.
As she lingers each night, Kymera begins to overhear things: a snide remark about Father, rumors of a hideous beast, and whisperings of a black market dealing solely in live, human goods. Ever since that first breath, she’s known exactly who she is, but now she is forced to ask who is the real monster here—the wizard, her father, or worse, herself?