Title: Moonlight and the Magician
Series: The Moonlight Curse, Book One
Author: Evelynn Carver
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 11/15/2022
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 71800
Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, gay, bisexual, fantasy/paranormal, mystery, magic/magic users, demons, enemies/rivals to lovers, road trip, action/adventure, family drama, shifters, HFN, cliffhanger
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Description
Spoiled pretty boy, Valentino, a revered fire mage of singular talent, finds himself pressured into a political marriage with a sadistic noblewoman he barely knows. He’s desperate to find a way out, even if it means leaving his gilded life in the spotlight behind.
Brand, a mysterious roguish vagabond, approaches Val and charms him into a deal: he will help him escape his problems in exchange for his assistance in breaking a vicious magical curse. What that curse entails is only revealed in the light of the full moon. Is Brand really who he says he is?
What begins as a romantic runaway adventure soon turns out to be much more than they bargained for. It seems that Valentino’s magic isn’t worth as much as he thought when it comes to dealing with a willful demon, gunslinging bounty hunters, and his own fickle heart. He might be falling in lust with a monster, but will he sell his very soul just to run away from responsibility?
Moonlight and the Magician
Evelynn Carver © 2022
All Rights Reserved
The curtain fell. Valentino rose from his practiced bow and strode backstage without a second look. There would be no encore tonight—he’d given them his all, and it had been more than enough. Behind the curtains, a servant handed him a wet towel. He took it and quickly brushed it lightly over his face and hair and then tossed it onto the floor. He sighed. He didn’t want to wash away this feeling, this heat, quite yet.
“Excellent performance tonight, my lord,” the servant said, leaning down to collect the discarded cloth.
“It was,” Valentino agreed. There was no need for humility, after all, when it was only the truth. He burned with exhilaration. It had indeed been one of the best performances of his young life. The audience would not soon forget it, he was sure. Mariona had not been able to take her eyes off of him the entire time. He could feel her eyes on him even now. His smile wavered, but he pushed the thought away quickly.
His sisters stepped behind the curtain after him. Their costume finery matched his own, heavy with sparkles and sweat. Allegra brushed past without a word, ignoring the servants who reached out to her with water. Giddy, she bounced down the hall and directly into the ballroom where joyous applause burst out again only to be muffled with the closing of the door behind her. Vienna stopped beside him and took a cloth from the servant with some urgency. Wringing it out over her head, she gasped in relief at the touch of the cool water.
“Too hot for you, sister dear?” Valentino asked.
She turned and scowled at him, water dripping down her face and over the old, angry scar along her left cheek. The mascara on her one good eye had transformed into a cascade of dark, muddy rivulets. She threw her cloth at Valentino, but he caught it without even blinking.
“Such a temper,” he laughed as she pushed past him and down the dark hall. He heard her dressing room door slam behind her.
He flushed with triumph, but the expression soon faltered. The heat and applause were fading away, taking his good mood with them. He bit back a yawn, but the familiar exhaustion was settling in.
“Your dressing room is ready for you, sir,” a servant prompted.
Valentino bristled. If a servant could tell how exhausted he was, he must look absolutely terrible. “Clear it out,” he ordered briskly. “I prefer to rest upstairs in private. I ask that no one harass me for an hour at least.”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir.” The small man bobbed and rushed away.
Valentino strode through the backstage area and down the hall. He didn’t stop moving, pushing past more servants and the smothering crowd that had gathered outside the ballroom. He ignored their calls and compliments and strode past the area marked off with velvet ropes to the private wing of the manor, darkness threatening at the edges of his vision.
Thankfully, the hallway here was pristine and nearly empty. He took a deep breath, pausing only to let the dizziness abate before continuing onward. The glossy wood-paneled walls gleamed in the lamplight, and the thick carpets under his feet softened his quick steps. He hurried through the hall, waving away a few other servants as he passed them by. The passage soon opened to a large atrium with two narrow, ornate staircases curving up to the apartments above.
Between the staircases hung a massive painting spanning from floor to ceiling. It was generations old and faded despite his mother’s many efforts at preservation. The subject of the painting, a young woman not much older than Valentino, was dressed in black and red, her cape pulled back to show the armor underneath splattered with gore. Her long, dark hair curled around her face like smoke, her eyes shining in the light of the fire, and a single tear ran down her cheek. A set of broken manacles lay at her feet, enclosed in a magic circle drawn in blood. On her neck hung a broken collar. In the background, a battle roared, horses and men fighting amid a burning field, but the young woman seemed somehow serene despite the war raging behind her.
Valentino paused for another breath at the foot of the stairs and squinted up at the painting. Looking at it, he was supposed to feel familial pride or some such, he was sure, but instead, the damn gory thing just unsettled him. It was melodramatic and ostentatious, so of course his mother loved it, but he hated it with the passion of a thousand suns.
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Evelynn lives with her partner, child, and dog in the Deep Dark South (also known as Atlanta, Georgia). She studied art in school and is somehow still deemed employable. In her free time, she reads genre fiction, plays video games, watches cartoons, and engages in other related unseemly behavior. She’s been writing and drawing stories since she was in grade school and would one day love to grow up to be a Real Author.
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