Domna, Part One

Kurztext / Annotation
As a realm teeters on the verge of rebellion anything is possible, except one woman's freedom to choose her fate.

Sofia Domna has her future planned. She'll follow in her father's footsteps and lead the Temple of Apollo. She'll marry her childhood love, Papinias. She'll have respect, status, and power.

So when her father bitterly forces her betrothal to a stranger and orders her from the life she's always known, Sofia is thrown into a new world where any wrong move could mean her demise.

Refusing to give up her home, her future, and her love, Sofia immediately plans her escape, but she soon learns exactly how cruel destiny and the people surrounding her new husband can be.

Set in a world brimming with political turmoil and violent ambition, Domna is a six-part serialized novel that tells the tale of Sofia Domna, a woman whose destiny is abruptly changed when she reprimands the wrong man.

As Sofia's life moves through the trials of a forced marriage, motherhood, and yearning temptation, she learns that destiny isn't given; it's made by cunning, endurance, and, at times, bloodshed.

If you like the political intrigue, adventure, and love triangles of historical fiction by Philippa Gregory and Bernard Cornwell, and the mythological world-building of fantasy fiction by Madeline Miller and Simon Scarrow, you'll love Domna .

Grab your copy of Domna, Part One: The Sun God's Daughter to begin this highly-anticipated tale of passion, ambition, and betrayal today.

Domna is a six-part serialized novel. The titles include:

Part One: The Sun God's Daughter

Part Two: The Solon's Son

Part Three: The Centaur's Gamble

Part Four: The Regent's Edict

Part Five: The Forgotten Heir

Part Six: The Solon's Wife


Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE

The Prophecy

I STEPPED INTO the darkened room. After the bright afternoon sun of a Bendrian summer day, my eyes could detect nothing, but the scent of spruce incense bit at my nostrils. Today, like every Bendrian youth on the eve of his or her sixteenth birthday, I would have my fate told by the oracle. From the seer's predictions a child would be given the path into adulthood. My future would be decided by an old man who served as the voice of the gods. Having my own mind and strong ambitions, I knew what I wanted. But would the gods let me have it?

"Enter," rasped the voice of the oracle.

A chair scraped against the stone floor. I still couldn't see properly, but I knew this room well enough to head toward the sound without faltering. Slipping my hands along the smooth, curved edge of a table, I took cautious steps until my toe brushed the leg of a chair. The wooden chair creaked as I slipped into to it. My legs started trembling the moment I was seated. I told myself I was being ridiculous. My destiny was already written by my birth and by my training.

My father served as high priest of Apollo and I, his second daughter, had followed his every movement since I could walk. I trained alongside the acolytes, I memorized the incantations, I never flinched at the sacrifices, and I understood how bedsport honored the gods. Unlike most people in Bendria I could read and write in all the dialects of Osteria, the ever-growing realm the Bendria region had only recently joined, and was even fluent in the language of the Califf Lands, another realm far to the south. My father once took enormous pride in my intelligence and beauty, and until the past year had given every indication that I should join him as priestess at the temple. I never confronted him about this change in attitude and he had never said anything outright. I assumed his frigid distance toward me must be due to the strain of his new duties under Osterian rule or even his way of forcing me to prove myself without his guiding hand, so I continued living every day certain of my future.

Still, the oppressive stillness of the oracle's room and its unnatural chill despite the heat of the bustling afternoon outside on the streets, had me on edge. A cool, papery hand clasped mine. I jumped in my seat and cursed my childish nerves. The dry hand gave a squeeze.

"I had doubts you would come."

"Shouldn't you have seen I would?" I teased and laid my free hand over his. My vision finally adjusted to the dim room and I smiled at the warm, crinkled face of my grandfather. Like all Osterian seers, he had been born with red hair. The strands had gone completely silver years ago, but the tufts of his unruly eyebrows retained their fiery tint.

"Such a cynical girl," he said with a sigh and released my hand.

I leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. "You know I'm not the type who would break with tradition." As a priestess my career would be centered on maintaining tradition. Growth was changing Osteria, with the twelve poli, polis in the singular, demanding independence and the High Solon of Osteria doing his best to keep the realm under his rule. Still, as long as the people had their rituals and festival days to keep them grounded, the troubles of politics were easier to ignore. In my future role as priestess, I would be the focus of that tradition in the polis of Bendria, so I needed to adhere to it.

And yes, I was eager to hear my grandfather's and the gods' blessing of my future with Papinias.

My grandfather, usually so still and calming, shifted in his seat and picked as his fingernails.

"And if you don't like what I have to say? Will you still want to uphold the tradition?"



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