#NewAgent Entry Round 1

Name: Cathryn Martyn-Dow-Jensen
Email address: JaenelleEbony@aol.com

Title: Eidolon
Word count: 102,000
Genre: YA gaslamp fantasy/mystery

Query:

In the Victorian-esque principality of Thule, the young crown princess Madeline Usher has committed suicide; her brother the prince is dead of an illness. With no heirs to succeed them, the royal House of Usher has fallen. In its place rises the House of Prospero with Lady Morella Prospero ascending the Midnight Throne.

Janine Fortunata is a young noble, the heir of her House, groomed since early childhood to one day take the family seat on the Council of the Eight Noble Houses. She was also the late princess's best friend and a member of the Raven Society, a secret vigilante team of nobles organized by Princess Madeline before her death. When a letter from the princess proves her death was no suicide, Janine must uncover secrets going back centuries, a conspiracy of dark magic, murder, and the ravenous specter of a long-dead princess who once ruled all of Thule with an infamous lust for blood and no mercy. A princess whose name was once spoken only in frightened whispers—Ligeia.

In a corrupt city where the police are as cruel as the crime lords, and plagued by strange blackouts, hallucinations, and nightmares that make her question everything she knows, Janine will need help discovering the truth. The only people she can trust are her cousin Berenice—aristocrat horticulturalist by day, lethal swordswoman by night—and Roderick Montresor: fellow Raven, the sworn enemy of Janine's family, and the man she's secretly loved for years. With fealty and forbidden love on her side, the Raven Society at her back, and a bloodthirsty killer calling themselves Red Jack stalking her and her friends, Janine will have to uncover the truth behind what really happened to Princess Madeline and save the people she loves from the ancient evil brewing beneath the city.

FIRST 255:

Roderick Montresor ignored the hammering of the rain against the carriage windows and stared at the three letters in his lap. Ribbons like nooses, caked in thick fragments of sealing wax, cluttered the seat beside him: purple, blue, burgundy. The color of bruises. Tight-lipped, he scanned the words in three different hands, all of them familiar. Betrayal could come from so many places, strike so close to home. His family crest showed it well—a serpent sinking its fangs into someone's heel even as it was being crushed.

We regret to inform you that Princess Madeline…

Your cousin, Lord Allan, is dead. You must take your place as my heir…

My dearest friend, you are in grave danger…

His princess was dead. The monarch and friend he'd served so faithfully for so long—dead. And her twin brother, the next in line for the Midnight Throne—also dead. Without heirs to the royal House of Usher, the kingdom of Thule passed to the next family in line, the House of Prospero.

And then Roderick's cousin, who looked so much like him with his dark hair and mixed-Nipponese and Thulian features; who'd loved him like a brother; who'd never treated him like the outcast society claimed he was: Allan was dead, too. He hadn't even been allowed to attend the funeral.

Roderick’s entire life had been upended in the short hours between when the three letters had arrived and when the footmen had finished packing his bags. And through it all, he'd only wished for one thing.