Book Title: Caught (A Balance of Magic #1)
Author: Jackie Keswick
Publisher: Jackie Keswick
Cover Artist: Jackie Keswick
Release Date: September 24, 2021
Genre: M/M Fantasy
Tropes: love vs. duty, cinnamon roll death god, soul mates, found family, worlds in peril, two against the world, hurt/comfort
Series Themes: the world is fragile, short-term decisions have long-term consequences, gifts are given for a reason
Length: 52 000 words
This is book #1 in the series. The romance ends on a HFN. The main story arc continues across all three books, and Tenzen and Rakurai will get their HEA at the end of book #3.
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Blurb
Rakurai hunts demons. He doesn’t consort with gods. Until he meets Tenzen.
Tenzen cares for souls. He despises the callous, self-absorbed Yuvine. Until he meets Rakurai.
A rescue and a sacrifice make a death god and a hunter fall in love, but a life of bliss is not on the cards. Someone is disturbing the balance of magic, leaving two worlds in danger. And while desire draws Rakurai and Tenzen together, duty, assassins, and clan politics keep them apart.
Who will Tenzen and Rakurai save in the end? Two worlds or each other?
Caught starts a new mm paranormal romance series, A Balance of Magic, featuring mortals and immortals from both sides of the veil, old promises, new revelations, and a bloody fight between love and duty. It is the first book of a trilogy and ends with a HFN. The characters will get their HEA in the final book.
Soul Garden
Summer-warm air brushed Rakurai’s face as he set foot in Tenzen’s garden. The sky stretched deep blue overhead, and a soft breeze blew a myriad of scents towards him. After the red and gold autumn hues around the rafeet’s manor, Rakurai struggled to adapt to the mass of colour in this cheerful jungle, where trees, shrubs, and flowers grew as they pleased and where butterflies tumbled from petal to petal without a care—hundreds, maybe thousands of them, in colours and sizes Rakurai had never seen before.
Enchanted by the spectacle, Rakurai hadn’t noticed Tenzen leaving his side. Not until the Shinigami returned, an indulgent smile on his face. “It’s a joy to see them here after all this time.”
“These are the souls you’ve guarded?”
“Some of them. The others were already in my care.” He laced his fingers with Rakurai’s and tugged him along a narrow path. “Let them recover and find their way around the garden.”
Tenzen moved deftly between bushes and giant ferns, not minding that fronds and branches tugged on his clothes and hair.
Between the wonders of the garden and the enchanting view of a relaxed Tenzen, Rakurai had much to take in. He pulled Tenzen to a stop as the path opened into a small meadow. “Who maintains all this when you’re not here?”
“Soul gardens adapt to the needs of the souls residing here. It’s… difficult to explain. The garden doesn’t exist in either of the worlds. It’s remade whenever a soul needs shelter.”
“If there were no souls here, there would be no garden?”
“Correct. Though it’s not a fate I’d like to think about. That’d be…”
“The end of the worlds?”
“Yes. Souls have passed through the veil long before your ancestor reached the Otherworld. I don’t want to imagine a time when they might not do so. It will come to pass, I know that. But I’ve tended my garden since the beginning of time, and I’d like to think that the end is millennia in the future.”
They stood in silence while Rakurai digested that. Humans might live eighty years. He was centuries older and—by Yuvine standards—still a young man. The Shinigami were immortal. “I can’t imagine all the years you’ve lived,” he whispered, awed and humbled. “All you’ve seen. The people you’ve met.” The time you’ve spent alone.
The kisses they’d shared seemed insignificant by comparison.
“Is it always summer in your garden?” he asked to distract himself.
“No. I told you the garden adapts to the souls sheltering here. What kind of garden it becomes is as much a surprise to me as it is to you.”
“You don’t know how your garden will appear?”
“No. Walk with me, and you’ll see. It can be—and at times has been—a Zen garden, austere and serene with its shapes representing other concepts. It can become a forest covered in snow. Or a riot of colour as it is now. When many souls reside here, it’s a garden composed of smaller gardens.” He smiled a little. “It was a rose garden once. Nothing but roses as far as you could walk. I spent days here, just enjoying the fragrance.”
Rakurai followed Tenzen across the meadow. He trailed the fingers of his free hand through the tops of the tall grasses and inhaled the scents of wildflowers until the meadow became an orchard and they stopped again to gaze. “This isn’t the garden I would build, but I’m enjoying this.”
“The fact that you would build a garden tells me a lot about you.” Tenzen slipped his arms around Rakurai’s middle and pulled them flush together, leaving Rakurai with no doubt of his interest. “I’m thinking austere and serene would describe it well, no?”
Rakurai let his weight rest against Tenzen. “I like rocks. And order.”
“Then come this way. I’ve one more task to complete here before I may rest.”
The garden changed as they walked, the riotous tumble of plants giving way to a more structured design of large-headed dahlias planted in rows of differing colours. In another corner, flowers that never shared a season bloomed side by side as if nature had decided it didn’t matter. And while the sight of a cherry tree laden with blossom beside a tree weighed down with ripe apples confused a part of Rakurai’s mind, he also delighted in the unexpected sight.
“My garden provides exactly the nourishment each soul needs to prepare for its onward journey,” Tenzen explained from beside him.
“What happens to beings that don’t have souls? Or to souls that don’t deserve an onward journey?”
Tenzen pointed to a far corner of the garden that was arid and bare, not in the contemplative sparseness of a Zen garden, but with jagged rocks and sharp-spiked plants. A sense of desolation wafted towards them as they came near.
“All souls deserve an onward journey,” he said and held out his hand. A small butterfly appeared in his palm, wings ragged and of no discernible colour. It seemed timid, unsure whether to leave the shelter of Tenzen’s palm. But Tenzen stood unmoving with his hand held out, patient as the end of the world, until the butterfly took flight. “All souls deserve an onward journey,” he repeated. “Some don’t know themselves well enough to understand their own needs. Those souls spend more time here until they’ve gained the wisdom they need for their next life.”
“This is not what the Yuvine would call an appropriate punishment for sinners.”
“You can’t know that. You’re not a soul confined to my garden. Just because you would enjoy it here, does not mean that everyone else feels the same. Besides, confinement to my garden doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does.” He wrapped his arms around Rakurai’s waist once more and nestled his cheek against Rakurai’s. “Enough of my business now,” he murmured. “We have a completed mission to celebrate. And I very much enjoyed kissing you and would like to do more of it.”
Jackie Keswick was born behind the Iron Curtain with itchy feet, a bent for rocks and a recurring dream of stepping off a bus in the middle of nowhere to go home. She’s worked in a hospital and as the only girl with 52 men on an oil rig, spent a winter in Moscow and a summer in Iceland and finally settled in the country of her dreams with her dream team: a husband, a cat, a tandem, a hammer and a laptop.
Jackie loves unexpected reunions and second chances, and men who write their own rules. She blogs about English history and food, has a thing for green eyes, and is a great believer in making up soundtracks for everything, including her characters and the cat.
And she still hasn’t found the place where the bus stops.
For questions and comments, not restricted to green eyes, bus stops or recipes for traditional English food, you can find Jackie Keswick in all the usual places:
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