Publisher's Synopsis
Step into this myth-haunted debut historical fantasy inspired by a true story, in which a young woman's quest to free her clan and become the legendary Fire Seer of Mull pits her against the Ancient Enemy of all Reality.
"The hero's journey navigates a wild, gritty and brutal backdrop whilst capturing spiritual elements within a silken web of natural magic and rich symbolism" - Finella Stewart
1588. Scotland.
On the otherworldly island of Mull, the fierce MacLean clan still hold close the mysterious secret of their ancestral fire. Accused of witchcraft, the chief's daughter must unite with the power of the last ember to become Ard Bandraoi--the Fire Seer--to save her clan. The Scourge of Scotland, Lord Gorm MacDonald, gives her a brutal choice: marry him and accept enslavement, or her clan will be savagely ruined and face death at the hands of the Inquisition.
Beth tries to ally with her potential saviours: a crew of wounded Spaniards and Diego Enriquez, the enigmatic and haunted Captain of the destroyed Spanish Armada washed up on her shores, whom Beth remembers from shining dreams emblazoned with rising hope.
She begins to fall in love. But the captain is fighting his own ghosts, and as Beth's inner Flame grows, it is seen by the Súl Olc Clan, the unseen dark dynasty controlling reality from the shadows.
They approach. To put it out.
The Ancient Enemy:
Primordial, evil, replicating itself across time as shadow, snake, and power, the Súl Olc Clan claimed the world and suppressed all who carried the sacred flame. Reality is dark: they keep it that way.
The Fire Seers:
Members of the fire clan, the secret revolutionaries hidden across time and space, marked by the Sight, the Wing, and the Flame. The Fire Seers must rise and defeat the foe who has controlled them and Earth--for centuries.
Beth MacLean--fierce fae-blooded mystic--will lead them. When she and her kinswoman Fiona are attacked by the MacDonalds and Fiona captured and taken to Dun Scaith, the fortress of Shadows, Beth knows she must take drastic steps. She must decode the snakeskin embers from an 800-year old manuscript and unite with the dangerous power of the Serpent in order to understand the path to freedom.
As war erupts, Beth must choose between her own freedom or ensuring the freedom of her beloved clan and enact a powerful surrender to an Ancient Enemy she may have had a hand in the making.
