ADVANCED HEALING SPELLS is the third book in the Ember Academy for Young Witches YA Urban Fantasy Academy series. If you love kick-ass heroines, Sapphic slow-burn romances, and magical boarding schools, you’ll love this latest fast-paced series in L.C. Mawson’s Snowverse.
Title: Advanced Healing Spells
Series: Ember Academy For Young Witches
Author: L. C. Mawson
Genre: Urban Fantasy, YA
Release Date: 15th April 2020
BLURB supplied by Xpresso Book Tours
Keeping my head
down shouldn’t be too hard… Right?
Unhappy with how
everything with the Amazons went down, the Slayers are now investigating Ember
Academy.
But not me. Not
as long as I keep my head down.
Which would have
been a hell of a lot easier if students hadn’t started dropping unconscious.
No one knows how
to wake them, but I have ways to find answers that they don’t
The question is
if I risk it with the Slayers watching me so closely…
Especially when
it would mean reaching out to the very criminal the Slayers are trying to find.
PURCHASE LINKS
EXCERPT
We
approached to see Sarah waiting outside the building, and she smiled as she saw
us, holding up a bag.
“What’s
in there?” I asked as I got close.
“The
final ingredients I need to wake up Aaron.”
“Wait,
really?”
“Yes,
really. Now, come on. We shouldn’t leave him waiting any longer.”
I
nodded before eagerly hurrying after Sarah and through the portal.
“We
should give you some privacy for waking up Aaron,” Willow said once we were
back through the portal. “Unless, of course, you want us to come with you.”
I
hesitated for a moment before shaking my head. “No, it’s okay. I can do this
alone.”
Willow
nodded before leaning forward and giving me a light peck on the cheek.
My
heart squeezed at the gesture and I wanted nothing more than to take my words back
and have her at my side.
But
no, it would be hard enough for Aaron to wake up anyway, he should have my
undivided attention when I apologised for everything that had happened.
For
my part in cursing him.
I
followed Sarah to the infirmary and waited patiently as she set up the spell,
which involved setting up various runes and lighting candles around the room in
an odd, disjointed pattern.
It
was strange, most spells liked symmetry, but this haphazard arrangement.
“You’re
trying to stabilise the spell,” I said as I remembered the arrangement from
Maria Brown’s book. “The spell is keeping him trapped because he’s the last
component to it and it needs him to stay stable, so you’re stabilising it
without him before undoing it.”
Sarah
turned to me with a frown before sighing. “Of course, Maria was tutoring you,
wasn’t she?” She shook her head. “I should have probably asked you for help
earlier. You might have helped come to this break-through earlier. But yes, I
need to stabilise the spell first, and then I should be able to shut it down
without risking any harm to Aaron.
“Do
you want to help me with the spell? The more power we use to stabilise the
spell, the less likely it is to want to cling to Aaron. And then I’ll need that
same power to undo it.”
I
nodded as Sarah finished her work and then picked up a notebook and handed it
to me.
“There,
it’s that incantation.”
She
pointed to the words, but I frowned, unable to read them.
“Oh,
sorry. Doctor’s handwriting,” she said with a shrug before taking a pen and rewriting
the incantation in print. “I don’t usually cast verbally, will you be fine to
follow along anyway?”
I
nodded. “Yeah, I don’t like casting verbally, either.”
“All
right, then on the count of three, think of the incantation and that should tie
us into the spell. Then we need to stabilise the missing strands.” She
indicated across the room, drawing lines in the air to where other candles
would have needed to be placed to make the set-up balanced. “I’ll place the
remaining candles if you focus on powering the spell, okay?”
I
nodded once more as I took my wand from my pocket and re-read the incantation
over and over again, determined to get it right.
“One...
two... three.”
On
the count of three, I thought the words and immediately dropped the notebook as
the magic in the room hit me like I was a lightning rod, desperately searching
for the missing parts it needed to stabilise.
Sarah
moved over to the missing places, lighting a candle in each spot.
With
each flame, I pushed back against the spell with my own magic, gripping my wand
tight as I coaxed the spell to the flame.
As
I did so, the flame shot up into the air, fuelled by my magic.
The
spell’s pull on me mellowed as it chased after the flame instead, settling into
a more harmonious shape.
The
more flames Sarah lit, the more it settled, until eventually, the spell left me
entirely, happily flowing through the room without trying to draw on living
hosts.
I
gasped as the spell left me, gripping the edge of Mr Stiles’ bed as a wave of
exhaustion almost knocked me off my feet.
“Hold
on, Amelia,” Sarah said as she made her way back over to me. “This spell won’t
let him go completely until we undo it.”
“And
how do we do that?”
“If
we extinguish the flames all at once, it should shut the spell down too quickly,
robbing it of the power it needs to find a new host to draw on.”
“Right.
I can do that.”
I
didn’t have to think about it much, the exhaustion shutting down my ability to
think straight and letting something else, something more primal, in.
I
snapped my wand-less hand into a fist and a gust of air shot through the room,
extinguishing every flame at once.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Some say she's an ancient creature of nightmare that was unleashed from
beneath the ocean, come to devour the souls of men. Others say that she's
a cosmic being from the beyond the stars that has taken corporeal form to
learn our ways for some unknown end...
In truth, L.C. Mawson lives in a tower in the middle of a haunted forest, far from civilisation and is definitely (probably?) not a witch who curses those who trespass upon her land. And she definitely cannot turn into a dragon that flies over cities in the dead of night and whose cries are often mistaken for an approaching storm. Where did you hear that? That's absurd...
The only contact she has with humanity is publishing a book once a month, which is definitely just for fun and not part of an ancient contract with a trickster god.
In truth, L.C. Mawson lives in a tower in the middle of a haunted forest, far from civilisation and is definitely (probably?) not a witch who curses those who trespass upon her land. And she definitely cannot turn into a dragon that flies over cities in the dead of night and whose cries are often mistaken for an approaching storm. Where did you hear that? That's absurd...
The only contact she has with humanity is publishing a book once a month, which is definitely just for fun and not part of an ancient contract with a trickster god.
AUTHOR LINKS
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