Melanie Harding-Shaw introduces the first chapter of her Wellington-set debut fantasy romance novel, City of Souls.
When I started writing City of Souls, my intention was to bring the joy back to my writing. I wanted to play and revel in these words. So, I took all my favourite world-building, settings, and characterisation and wove them together into something that is an action-packed, fun, urban fantasy romance.
It has enemies-to-lovers tension, a fake relationship and characters with beautiful wings and snark. It has complex world politics, intricate magic-systems, and power imbalances. It has sentient strongholds, benevolent necromancy and found family. And it has a deep love for its setting of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, even if I did collapse all 155+ hectares of the city’s reclaimed land back into the ocean and turn the Beehive into a dilapidated nest of giant winged spider-monsters (sorry).
I dedicated City of Souls to my wingpeople – to everyone who has helped me on my way and to all the readers out there who enjoy sexy wings as much as I do. I took inspiration from all the wonderful fantasy romance writers of Aotearoa New Zealand who are killing it on the international stage – writers like AJ Lancaster and Nalini Singh (if you haven’t read them yet, go read Stariel and Guild Hunter right now) – and I was so honoured to have my first steps into romance acknowledged when City of Souls won Agent’s Choice in the Romance Writers of New Zealand Great Beginnings Contest earlier in the year. You won’t find a more welcoming bunch of writers anywhere.
CHAPTER ONE: HEL
Hel hesitated on the threshold of the forge she was leaving, assessing her options. The bag of copper cuffs she’d just collected hung heavy on her back and the vibration from her smartwatch reminded her she was seven minutes shy of losing the bonus for fast delivery. The unreasonable deadline was a fucking crock because this package was going straight to her boss at the courier headquarters and she knew he wouldn’t be able to give them out until shift change anyway. Veer left and take the safer, slower route overshadowed by the buildings and causeways of the city proper? Or cut through the dead zone of the waterfront and get that bonus? She glanced down at her watch and the graphic showing her indenture debt flashed, taunting her with the opportunity of another incremental step closer to independence.
“You’re fast for a human, but it’s not worth the risk, sweetheart. Keep that beautiful body safe,” Wayland called from behind her.
Hel glanced over her shoulder at the smith, her fingers absently stroking the cold metal of the baton with its concealed blades that was strapped to her thigh. Wayland was as annoyingly attractive as most elementals. The strength it took to hold their sweeping wings clear of the ground and manoeuvre in flight gave them a base-level muscle definition that wasn’t remotely fair, and Wayland’s physique was even more sculpted from his work at the forge. His feathers were a deep grey that bore a remarkable resemblance to the steel he worked and the same colour was mirrored in eyes framed with gentle laugh lines. For an elemental, he was bearable. His bulging muscles did nothing for her, though. She was stronger than a human, too, not that he knew that. Big deal. Despite her disinterest, his flirting still sparked an ache deep inside her that she quickly squashed. Even if he hadn’t been an elemental, he wasn’t worth the risk. Loneliness was survivable. Being discovered because she’d let her guard down and drawn attention to herself was not.
Hel shot him an aggressive grin over her shoulder as she stepped out into the fading sunlight and spun toward the dead zone without bothering to respond.
As she pushed herself into a ground-eating run to make up time, her eyes scanned the sky above the nearby shoreline for threats. The humans had built a large chunk of their city on land reclaimed from the sea, and they’d paid for it when the Melding hit. The merging of two realities and the resulting earthquakes had reverted the shoreline back to where nature intended and left the twisted wreckage of high-rise buildings scattered in the shallows of the harbour like half-buried zombies clawing out of a watery architectural graveyard.
Out where she was, past the edge of the city’s safe zone, the rubble had been shifted to create a kind of breakwater that doubled as a barrier against the ocean’s predators that found a safe haven in the harbour. She was careful to keep close to the buildings looming to her left, away from the uneven edge where cracked asphalt gave way to sandy beach. Boarded-up windows loomed above her. Most of these buildings closest to the water were empty, part of a defensive barrier, but at least they had warded foundations that should keep her safe from any creatures coming up through the earth beneath her.
A flicker of shadow overhead had her flinching closer to the wall. Hel swore to herself as she searched her surroundings for the cause and failed to find it. Yanking her baton from its sheath, she put on a burst of speed.
Despite the danger, she revelled in the sensation of her feet pounding on the ground and the sharp wind blowing off the harbour that whipped her hair back from her face. In these moments of absolute focus with muscles straining she could almost forget everything else. All the loneliness, the constant fear of discovery, the grind of working day after day to clear her debt. It all faded to the background.
Her destination was one of the many elemental structures scattered through the city. A building grown from the rock of its foundations, sculpted and reinforced with pure elemental power and nestled in the shadow of the iconic Soul Tower. The tower itself was already visible in the distance ahead of her. Its soaring circular façade of twenty-nine stories topped with a crown of nine radiating metal posts was impossible to miss. The humans used to call it the Majestic Centre and it was the tallest building in the city, tall enough that it should’ve succumbed to aerial attack long ago. Instead, the elementals had saved it from destruction in the first hours after the Melding, reinforcing every pane of glass with the impossibly strong and intricate metalwork only their magic could produce until it looked like a soaring sculpture of leadlight stained glass. At night, the coloured lights that tipped those posts made it look like jewels on its crown. Under attack, the entire building would light up like a beacon of death magic.
Thinking of the unique necromancy wielded by the elemental lord of the City of Souls did nothing to ease the anxiety that stray shadow had sparked and her discomfit only grew as she approached the most exposed section of her route. Before the Melding sank so much infrastructure into the sea, five multi-lane roads had formed a broad intersection at her location. There was no cover.
A flash of colour to her right had her launching into a sprint towards the shelter of the abandoned hotel that was still too far ahead. The movement had come from across the lapping waters of the ocean near the looming silhouette of the old museum that formed a sand-coloured island a block or two offshore. Hel slowed her momentum to check what she was up against even as every cell in her body was screaming at her to run. The light from the setting sun glinted off a burnished gold form suspended below the kind of sweeping wingspan needed to keep a body that size airborne.
The creature was small for one of the griffins that nested on Matiu Island in the harbour’s centre, probably one of the juveniles. The older griffins knew to steer clear of the city’s defences. She let out a breath and forced her shoulders to relax. She could work with this. She couldn’t outrun even a juvenile, but it wasn’t old enough to have fully honed its predatory technique. It wasn’t flying death yet.
The distraction of watching the incoming predator sent her stumbling on the damaged road and she sprawled forward, twisting her body to avoid damaging the package on her back as her knees took the brunt of her weight. She scrambled back to her feet, cursing herself for the stupid mistake. The incursion of the beach and water in this part of the city made the uneven road far too dangerous to run on while looking in the other direction. There was a reason it was called the dead zone, even if attacks were less common now the city’s defences were so well coordinated.
The young griffin was closing in as she took off again, her movement sparking its instinct to chase. She ran faster, mentally calculating velocity and the seconds until it would strike as she tightened her grip on her weapon. She wasn’t going to make it to cover. The backdraft of the griffin’s wings buffeted her as she finally spun to confront it, already raising her weapon to strike as she foiled its attack position by leaping toward it. She’d timed it perfectly, interrupting its lunge before it could use its dive to pin her to the ground with wickedly sharp lion claws. The griffin’s hooked beak gaped wide as it snapped at her, and she used her twisting momentum to put her whole body behind a strike that smashed her heavy metal baton into its face.
Her fingers numbed at the vibrating impact, the resounding crack quickly followed by an ear-piercing shriek and a rush of air that knocked her to the ground as the poor creature beat a fast retreat. She winced in sympathy. It wasn’t the griffin’s fault Hel looked like prey, and she was pretty sure its beak had split beneath the blow. Hopefully it hadn’t splintered.
She groaned as she dragged herself back upright and glanced at her watch. Thirty seconds to the deadline. There was no way she was going to make it. She may as well have taken the long way round and saved herself the extra bruises. It took far more effort than it should’ve done to force her aching knees back into a jog.
City of Souls by Melanie Harding-Shaw (Coruscate Press, $35) is now available from Unity Books. You can get the free prequel online at Melanie’s website.