Savage Wild Hearts

Book 1: The Savage Wilds

by Sean Fletcher

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA Dark Fantasy; YA Action & Adventure; YA Epic Fantasy; epic fantasy; young adult fantasy; ya fantasy; dark fantasy

Synopsis

Carve their hearts. Take their power.

Val has only ever known a Seattle surrounded by the forested Wilds. Like everyone, she’s heard whispers about the glittering, ruthless kingdoms and dangerous human-like wildlings deep within. But with a sick guardian and money tight, Val’s more than willing to brave the Wilds’ depths, carving and selling magic-filled heart gems from its numerous beasts.

Until one day she wanders too far and Rune finds her.

He’s a wildling, more savage and beautiful than any beast, and he has a deal for her: Val will use her unique abilities to help him take the unclaimed high throne of the Wilds. In return, Rune will let her carve the powerful heart gems of his enemies, something there’s no shortage of.

As Val is thrust into a vicious conflict between Lords, kings, and awakening gods, nothing is as it seems. But both the Wilds and Rune—cruel, kind, broken Rune—hold secrets, and if Val’s not careful it might be her heart she loses next.

Fans of epic adventures with morally gray characters, a lush fantasy world, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance will love Savage Wild Hearts, the first book in the Savage Wilds series.

 

Read more

Release date: July 19, 2023

Publisher: Epic Worlds Publishing

Print pages: 358

Sample

The Dreams

When I was younger, I often had nightmares.

I’d awaken covered in sweat, panting like I’d been running through the Wilds, the crash of some beast giving chase at my back.

Though I always awoke moments before its claws grabbed me, it didn’t feel like I’d barely escaped death. It only felt like I was putting it off for one more day, one more hour, one more minute.

To calm myself, I’d check on Peyton sleeping soundly in the other bedroom and Joshua where he curled on the couch, mouth agape, blankets covering him. I’d look out the darkened window at the glittering lights of the other apartments, the city, and Seattle beyond.

Then I’d look the other direction, into the gaping blackness that was the Wilds. When I did that, the other parts of my dream would come back in a swirling rush.

Me, putting my child-sized, bloody hand in Peyton’s, and letting her lead me out of the trees and to safety.

Peyton telling me that my parents were gone, that I was the last survivor of the Wilds that had claimed my home.

A young boy’s face. His eyes—red with flecks of gold, or were they gold with flecks of red?—peering closely at me, his grin wickedly crooked.

Though dreams like that became less frequent the older I got, and the bad memories faded along with them, the feeling of them remained grafted onto my bones: Deep dread and a looming sense of something after me, even though I had no idea what.

Only the boy’s face remained clear. He’d helped me the day Peyton found me, I was sure. He’d helped me, and left me with a warning, his words teasing but edged with menace:

“Careful, little fox. Getting too close to things like me is going to get you hurt.”

If only I’d listened to him.

 

Chapter One

I crouched low in the undergrowth, berry juice and blood covering my face, and peered deep into the Wilds.

The Wilds peered back.

The blood wasn’t mine. Not yet, though there were plenty of things out here that would spill it given half the chance. Some of those things were around me. Scurrying, scuttling, rustling, scampering. None of what I hunted had noticed me, but that could change in an instant, as could my luck.

For humans, nowhere in the Wilds was safe. Not even for a moment.

My eyes moved with my quarry as it fluttered between the overhead branches. I slowly tilted my head. The twigs and berries I’d woven in the curls of my black hair caught on the brush, and I avoided wincing.

The bird paused, let out a throaty caw. Ever so slowly, I raised my bow and pulled—back muscles straining, scar on the inside of my arm stretching—until it was fully taut.

Breathe out. Hold. Center.

Times like this, the moment before the kill, everything else faded out. My vision funneled to just me and my prey. Even the Wilds, which were never quiet, seemed to hold its breath, as though waiting to see what would happen.

I released the arrow.

A hissing flight followed by a meaty thwack. The bird dropped. I breathed again, and the Wilds came rushing back. The smell of churned dirt. The glistening, chilly mist on my skin. The distant crack as creatures disturbed the underbrush deeper within.

I hurried to grab the bird before something else did. The arrow had pierced right through. Its glassy eyes peered up at me, no longer tinged gold and red.

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” I mumbled as I tugged the arrow out. “Or your clumsiness, or plain bad luck. Whatever it was, thanks.”

I slung the bow on my back and pulled my hunting knife. My quiet and effective tools. Nothing loud and obnoxious like the pistols and assault rifles some hunters carried. I didn’t need to draw more attention to myself.

I hovered the tip of the knife over the bird’s heart. “Easy does it. Easy…”

I plunged it in. Warm blood ran down the blade and coated my fingers, but in no time I’d pulled out a misshapen, glowing gem. The heart gem.

My own heart fell. The bird had been small, but I’d hoped its heart gem would have been bigger than this. Along with the meager pickings I’d already collected today, selling it would barely cover the price of getting out here and back.

Grumbling, I stowed the gem in my pouch and used the blade of my knife to dig a shallow grave. The moment I’d removed the heart gem, the rot had begun. The bird’s muscles and tendons turned to wet leaves and slender roots. Mushrooms sprang from the tips of its wings and its feathers changed to veiny leaves until I was lowering nothing but a collection of damp forest debris into the hole.

No matter how many heart gems I took, I never got used to that.

I stood and checked my watch. Three hours until the bus left, and I was stuck out here. I’d grown up playing in the Wilds, despite the dozens of times Peyton had caught me and made me promise never to enter again. I never could. To me, the Wilds and all their terrible beauty were like a drug: dangerous, but with a high that was even more alluring.

But even I didn’t want to spend the night out here. That’d be a death sentence.

Still, I needed more heart gems. Bigger ones. That meant bigger, more dangerous prey, and that meant going deeper. I could risk it. I had to.

I found an open glen with a stream running through it. After checking that nothing was watching me, I washed the blood off my hands and refilled my Nalgene, the cold water turning the tips of my fingers numb. I didn’t stop scanning the edges of the trees, pausing on every flicker of movement.

To me, who’d spent so much time here, there were patterns to my surroundings. Scars from past fires and magic run amok, or maybe even from as early as the Reclamation. The greenery was a map that a discerning eye could navigate, leading a person away from danger. Or, if read poorly, straight into it.

I breathed in mist, and the faint ashen taste of magic came with it.

There’d been forests before the Wilds, long ago, with smaller trees and paths that were safe for humans to walk. At least that was what I’d heard. One day the Wilds were simply there, and its tainted magic had sunk its roots into our world. Trees tripled in size. Plants grew in an overgrown frenzy. Beasts never seen before appeared, as though they’d crawled from the night itself. Even the animals we knew changed with the magic. The entire place became full of teeth, and full of them—

I was crouching among the reeds before I knew why.

Everything had gone quiet. Even the insects stopped humming. Then I heard it moving in the trees across the glen. Something bigger than any deer or bear, something that uprooted saplings and trembled the earth.

I focused on the lichen-consumed rock my hand rested on and thought small thoughts. I am invisible. I am not here. You will pass me by.

And then whatever it was did just that and time started again. I slowly stood and stared at where it’d gone. A delightful, terrible fear came over me.

A beast that big had to have a massive heart gem. Enough to get us by for weeks. Maybe even a month. Danger be damned. I was going after it.

I double-tied my bootlaces, freed myself from the muck, and followed, easily finding the cleared trail the beast had left. I started to jog, senses on alert for the moment the Wilds hushed again.

I soon came across some broken branches that told me the beast had gone left, deeper in than I’d anticipated. I glanced at the sun barely straining through the gray clouds. I still had time if I hurried. And if I didn’t run into any complications.

I pushed aside branches and slid down a hill into a small gulley, jeans soaking with mist.

A green shape loomed and I froze, certain the beast had snuck up on me.

It was a small prop plane, claimed by the forest. Vines grounded its wings, and half a tree burst from the carcass of its fuselage.

“Nothing to be scared of,” I said to calm my rapidly beating heart.

I ran my hand along the rusted propeller, held fast by roots. Most people stayed safely within Seattle’s city limits or the well-guarded suburbs surrounding it. Most relied on hunters like me for heart gems and protection. Maybe this pilot had wanted to find a lost loved one. Or uncover a town that the Wilds had long claimed. Or maybe they’d been stupid. Whatever the reason, they’d clearly flown too close to the Wilds and paid dearly for it.

I leapt inside the raggedly torn rear and checked for any remaining supplies. Finding none, I made my way around to the torn cockpit and my stomach dropped.

The pilot and their passenger had been dead long enough for their skin and muscles to rot away or to be stripped by scavengers. For their sake, I hoped they’d died on impact. Whether immediately, or slow and agonizing, neither one had made it more than a few feet from the shattered window of the cockpit before the roots had burst from their mouths, forcing their faces toward the canopy. Slender vines of delicate white corpse flowers wreathed their arms and legs that remained. The missing limbs might have been lost in the crash or torn off.

I forced myself to look at them. No matter how many days I survived, no matter how much I learned and how beautiful and even comforting the Wilds could be, there were things within that would end me without a second’s thought.

The Wilds were harsh, but only the wildlings were this savage.

Something caught my eye at the bodies’ feet. Someone had built a small house—a shrine—from bark-flaking branches. The coppery-gold leaf of a glint bush was nestled inside. An offering of sorts taken from one of the rarest plants in the Wilds.

I reached for my knife, turning slow in a circle. The few glint bush leaves I’d ever seen didn’t last more than a few hours after being picked. Maybe this one had been left by a pilgrim of one of the numerous religions that’d cropped up around the Wilds. Maybe that was just my wishful thinking.

With an uncomfortable, tingling awareness of being watched, I kept moving, only stopping long enough to grab a handful of herb blooms for Peyton.

“You can’t go,” Peyton had said this morning before I’d stepped out. She’d managed to push herself out of bed and lean against the door frame, something she hadn’t been well enough to do in a while. A thin, baggy nightgown had draped her withering frame, and her hair stuck to the near-constant sheen of sweat coating her forehead. “You know how much I worry when you do. It’s a gamble every time you go there, and one day you’ll lose.”

I’d concentrated on cinching my knife tighter to my belt and thought carefully about how to make her understand something I didn’t understand myself. No matter what I saw or what danger I barely escaped, I always found myself going back into the Wilds.

“You’d rather I watch the rot eat you alive?” I said, giving up my reasoning. “That’s less of a gamble and more of a certainty.”

“I’m getting—”

She gave a thick, wet cough, lungs filled with wild rot just like thousands of others. She managed a wan smile when the coughing stopped. “I was going to say better.”

I gently looped my arm around her and helped her hobble back to bed, where she’d stayed since the rot had entered its final stage. I hated this room, hated that it reminded me of how powerless I was against what tore her apart.

“I’ll bring you more herb bloom to ease the pain. Then give me a couple weeks to make enough for a visit to the clinic in Seattle. I heard they’ve found a treatment that should be a hundred percent effective.”

“Don’t do this, Val,” Peyton wheezed. “Joshua is with the DFA. He can—”

“He won’t,” I snapped. “He doesn’t think it’s curable. He’d rather burn down the Wilds than see if anything in them can help.”

Peyton had grabbed my arm. Her grip was stronger than it’d been in weeks, her eyes more lucid and shock-white against her fever-flushed skin. “I need to tell you… I should have before… You can’t go, Val. They’ll find out you’re there. They’ll find you. The Wilds lost you once. It won’t lose you again.”

I must have heard this story a dozen times. How Peyton and her ex-husband had given birth to Joshua, but how she’d always wanted a little girl. How, the day she’d found me, blood-covered and alone at the edge of the Wilds, it seemed like I was the answer to her diminishing prayers. But all those prayers weren’t enough to ease her fear of losing me.

“I’ll be back soon,” I’d whispered, pulling away.

I broke off another sprig of herb bloom and stored it in my backpack. I picked up the beast’s tracks as they ran past the shrine. Fresh, with the deep indentations of five claws, its entire foot as big as my head. I swallowed the fear creeping up my throat. I was closing in. This wasn’t the time to second-guess.

My legs burned as I hiked up the next hill. I smelled fresh water, heard the slight trickling of a stream, or maybe runoff from a nearby lake. The perfect resting spot for a wandering beast to quench its thirst after a full day carving a path of destruction.

Staying crouched, I carefully parted the undergrowth until I made it to the edge of a pebbled shore. I barely held in a gasp to avoid giving my position away, but my breath was stolen regardless.

Trees nearly as thick as skyscrapers—trunks scarred by fire and age—grew half-submerged in pools of crystalline water so clear I could see the roofs of the houses sunken twenty feet down. A drowned city, now a habitat for fish and water beasts. I could just make out their murky shapes flitting out of the buildings’ long-shattered windows and broken doors.

Across the surface, islands of green moss and ferns spanned beneath a canopy so broad that only thin rays of light made it through. All was still.

All except for the boy.

He was crouched on the nearest island of green, completely dry as though he’d managed to jump the ten feet straight across the water. His back was to me, but it looked like he was examining something. He brought it to his nose and sniffed.

My first thought was that he had to be the pilgrim who’d left the glint bush leaf. No one else would be out this far, and he was dressed strangely enough for it: a mottled green tunic with a hood as deep as the one on my rain jacket. His entire form, even crouched, was hard around the edges, crackling with strength. A circlet of ivy and nightshade was woven within his dirty-blond hair, clasping itself closed at the back of his head. The entire outfit was ridiculous, but I had seen worse among the sick and desperate who braved the Wilds.

I started to rise from where I hid, to call out that if he didn’t head back soon—if we both didn’t—we’d be dead.

As though sensing my movement, he stood and turned.

Tall. He was tall. And he didn’t try to blend in as any prey or human would, but instead stood out like a predator daring anything to attack. His eyes were gold-red. His mouth was sharp and thin like a sliver of broken glass, and it cocked into a smirk.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he said, voice lush with threat.

Everything about him made me want to scream danger. He might have been the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen, but in the Wilds, the worst things for you looked the best.

That was most true for him: a wildling.

I stayed crouched, barely breathing, as he turned his focus from one island and tree to the next.

It was impossible. Nobody had seen a wildling this close to Seattle in two years, since the last envoy failed. For a while, I even doubted they existed. Surely they were figments of fairy tales told to entertain primetime viewers or conjured by veteran hunters to scare off the newbies.

But there were stories; human cities pulled deep into the Wilds’ depths, and the survivors made slaves to inhuman masters. Wildling kingdoms, each with their own rulers, all viciously fighting for territory and claiming parts of the human world inch by inch. All of it sounded like fabrications of a fevered imagination.

And yet here he stood.

“I know someone’s there.”

My skin chilled. The wildling was looking down at a collection of butterflies at the water’s edge, their vibrant wings flashing in the sunlight. His eyes rose and scanned his surroundings again. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”

I slowly started to back up. Paused. Now that I’d tempered my panic, a couple things became startlingly clear:

If half the stories of wildlings were true, I wouldn’t make it five feet before he discovered me. And then I’d end up like the pilot and their passenger. The ones he likely killed.

Then there were his eyes. Violently gold and red. Every beast with eyes like that had a heart gem. Who was to say he wouldn’t, too? One powerful enough to buy Peyton and me out of our crappy apartment. Enough to get her the treatment she needed with more left over for the necessities.

My body moved on its own, and I silently nocked an arrow and drew my bow before I finished the thought. I rested the arrow’s vanes against my cheek. The tip kept shaking when I aligned it with his chest.

He deserves it. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, not for a second.

I’d taken life before. Dozens of beasts of the Wild had died at my hand. This boy—this beast—wouldn’t be any different.

I evened my breathing. The wildling turned, giving me an easier shot. My surroundings shrank to the single point that was the tip of the arrow. All I had to do was loose it.

Loose it.

Loose it.

I thought of all I had to gain. Peyton. Our life. Freedom from this danger.

My fingers stayed frozen in their curled position.

I couldn’t do it.

I jumped, aim jerking, as the wildling laughed. “You’ll only get one shot. Make it count.”

I realized he was talking to me a moment before the ferns wrapped around my legs and pulled.

The arrow flew wide over his shoulder and embedded into the tree’s trunk. The wildling’s eyes zeroed on me. “There you are.”

I ripped myself free of the mud, nearly losing my boots in the process. The ferns he must have magicked tried to hold me in place. Panicked, I whipped out my knife and cut myself free.

I nearly fell face first as I fled, not daring to look back. I didn’t need to. I could hear the near-silent rush of air as something leapt across the water and landed on the nearby shore.

He was after me.

Though I had only seen a wildling for all of two minutes, I knew I couldn’t outrun him. My only hope was to make it to where the bus picked me up, but that was at least a couple of miles.

More magicked plants reached for me from the undergrowth. I sliced them all away in a frenzy and kept running. Close behind, the boy who was not a boy laughed. “Good. Make this fun.”

I wouldn’t make it a couple miles.

I reached a rise and slid down a slick embankment, ending up at the bottom in a crouch, partially concealed by bushes. My harsh breath screamed in my ears, only just drowning out my thudding heart. I struggled to clench my knife with my sweat-slicked hand. I didn’t hear the wildling pursuing me anymore, but that didn’t mean much. He was part of the Wilds, as much as the trees and beasts. If he wanted me, I couldn’t escape.

I had to fight.

I scooped a handful of damp dirt and forced my breathing to slow. Years of practice had me parsing out the surrounding sounds and smells, categorizing them into those that were benign and those that could cause me harm.

There you are.

I spun and threw the dirt. The wildling knocked it aside with a flick of his hand, sneering.

“That was alarmingly sad. No, don’t try to fight me.”

I’d raised my knife when his voice hit me. It was thick and heady, dripping syrup into my veins and ensnaring every thought I had of resisting him.

“That’s it,” he said as my limbs slackened, knife lowering. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Certainly not from me.”

He drew closer, confident his magic had me completely under his control. “Perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps you are not so special after all. I had hoped that you would be different. That’s mine now.”

He held out his hand for my knife and, despite my resistance, I started to give it to him, helpless under the wildlings’ most feared ability.

Influence. Compulsion. Magic. Whatever you called it didn’t make it any better. The horror stories the news played reminded us always. Scenes of people found frozen in place and succumbed to the elements, despite being mere feet from shelter. Some who had completely lost their minds and murdered their families or killed themselves. Others who had simply gotten too close to the trees and were drawn inside against their will, never to be heard from again.

My knife was nearly in the boy’s hand. I willed myself to focus. I willed his magic to release me.

A second before his fingers curled around my knife, I whipped it upward, using every bit of my natural fighting instinct. It was a joke compared to the ex-military and government-sponsored hunters, but it was enough to throw the wildling off guard. He snarled as the blade nearly caught his cheek.

I swiped again, driving him back. He was fast. Too fast. I couldn’t hit him, but stopping for even a moment meant giving him a chance to counter—

“You will stop.”

His compulsion hit me again, and my body briefly stuttered to a halt, magic settling over my bones like a leaded suit.

“You are something,” he mused, recovering. This close he smelled like earth after the rain, like a charred tree following a lightning strike. “I’ve never encountered a human with the ability to resist compulsion as strong as mine before. But you still couldn’t stop me.”

My cheek tingled as he traced a finger around the edge of my face.

“I can make it quick,” he whispered. “Turn you into a tree in the span of a heartbeat. Or keep you immobilized until the wolves come and tear off pieces of you bit by bit. What do you think? Do you agree that’s a suitable punishment for trespassers like you? Now, now, don’t do that.”

My entire body had begun to tremble. But not from fear, as he likely thought. His compulsion was no stranger to me now, and I knew how to fight it.

The moment I broke his magic’s hold on me, I plunged my knife straight into his chest, burying it to the hilt.

“How about a third option?” I said. “You die.”

He didn’t scream. He barely let out a gasp as his body hit the ground. The Wilds went silent, and for one terrible moment, I feared retribution. I’d just killed one of their masters.

I wiped at my cheeks. My face still tingled with the feel of his fingertips on my skin. Extremely human fingertips. Everything about him looked entirely too human. Even now he appeared as though he were merely sleeping, eyes closed, a smirk on his lips.

Maybe I should have felt horrified at what I’d done, but there was only relief. He’d have done so much worse; he’d basically said so. This was nothing less than he deserved.

I had no time to linger. Not as late as it was, while standing over the body of a wildling, and very much still in danger.

I knelt and, with a hard tug, removed my knife from his chest. Only a thin smear of blood coated the blade. Red as bittersweet berries. Seeing it turned my stomach. I’d expected sap.

Small white flowers had started blooming across his chest, as though trying to cover up the unsightly wound.

I followed the line of flowers to where his heart gem should be, just beneath a few layers of now-dead flesh. Less than a minute. That was all it’d take for me to carve it out, and my problems would be solved. At least for a time.

I rested my knife over his chest, letting the tip sink past his damp shirt and into his skin. Just a little more pressure. I could do this.

A strange rhythm radiated through my hands. A heartbeat, steady and strong.

Not mine, I realized too late. His.

“You should have gone for my heart first,” the wildling said.

Then all I saw was darkness.