Venice. 1515. A time of political intrigue. A time of internecine war, upheaval and deadly deals.
What history knows of this time and place is on the brink of monumental change. Change that could thrust the post-apocalyptic future into another Dark Age.
Two operatives from the future—Veluria, a trained courtesan from the Sisterhood and Andreas, an assassin from the rival Council of the Brotherhood—breach the shadows linking past and future. Tasked with identifying and derailing events that threaten both worlds, the operatives turn to the most influential powermongers of the age, the Medici family.
Three brothers, three men with secrets and unusual powers. Only one is approachable. Only one is susceptible to Veluria’s unique charms.
Meet Stefano de’ Medici.
Stefano is the youngest of the Medici brood, considered the handsomest, the most adept at courtly manners and an irresistible charmer for women of all social stations. The pater familias, Cosimo, turns a blind eye to the many inappropriate liaisons that threaten to drain the family purse, the price never too high to smooth over outrage from cockholded husbands. Cosimo is a patient and indulgent father for he knows his youngest will service the family’s interests when the time is right.
When Veluria targets the young man as her entrée into the seats of power in Venice and Florence, even her sophisticated training cannot prepare her for the delights she’s about to experience.
Cosimo is no fool and he suspects Veluria is more than the vapid French courtesan beguiling his youngest. To learn more about this potential threat to the family interests, he dispatches his eldest son, his enforcer, to bring the woman in for interrogation.
Meet Antonio de’ Medici, known to all as the Demon de’ Medici, the man without a soul, his father’s closest confidant, his youngest brother’s staunchest supporter.
Antonio de’ Medici, known as Tonio but only to his family, is a man of unusual and deadly talents, talents that make him the ideal interrogator and the ideal assassin. Tonio enforces his father’s wishes without question, a killing machine in the service of his family and his city-state of Florence. His loyalty, his resolve are unquestioned—except when it comes to matters of his youngest brother and the future their father has planned for the young man.
Dispatched to secure what might be a political prize of inestimable value, Tonio gradually falls under Veluria’s spell, but not so far that he cannot impose his own powerful will and extraordinary gifts in what becomes a tug of war: a war of spirit, determination and resolve. And a war of the heart.
Tonio will see to his brother’s happiness, even if that means setting aside his desires and feelings for the strange woman enrapturing his soul-less existence. But an act of violence unleashes a side of young Stefano that will change the shape of all they know and understand. And it will set into motion a set of tragic events that no one, not even the Sisterhood, could have predicted.
The Shadow of This World:
Review, Excerpt, Blurb
HERE
Venice. 1515. A time of political intrigue. A time of internecine war, upheaval and deadly deals.
What history knows of this time and place is on the brink of monumental change. Change that could thrust the post-apocalyptic future into another Dark Age.
Two operatives from the future—Veluria, a trained courtesan from the Sisterhood and Andreas, an assassin from the rival Council of the Brotherhood—breach the shadows linking past and future. Tasked with identifying and derailing events that threaten both worlds, the operatives turn to the most influential powermongers of the age, the Medici family.
Three brothers, three men with secrets and unusual powers.
Meet Nicolo de’ Medici, the middle brother, five years the junior of Antonio and the Demon’s closest confidant. But more than that, Nico shares something with his older brother that no one, not even their canny father, knows about.
It’s a secret that will change everything.
Nico is a half-brother to Stefano and Antonio, his mother one of the Hapsburg whores as Tonio is so found of calling the breeding stock of the rival Austro-Hungarian alliance of states. With his penetrating cobalt blue-eyed stare and intense visage, Nico strikes fear in the heart of all with whom he deals. Yet he is a canny and masterful negotiator, assigned by his father to permanent residence at the powerful court at Castile.
Skillful with weaponry he is a fearsome warrior in his own right. But he is also a warrior with a deep, abiding soul and a passion for one woman who betrays everything he knows and trusts. He bears a terrible secret, a curse, that insinuates everything he does, all that he feels.
When his beloved older brother falls prey to kidnappers in Spain, it is he—with a small band of men and the woman he knows to be more than she seems, Veluria—who attempts the rescue. Nico will be forced into a decision no man should ever have to face.
Tonio is not the only one in peril. Stefano has been bartered into marriage at the court of Duke Friedrich, a man of ‘certain proclivities’ and ‘appetites’ that tempt and corrupt young Stefano.
In search of ‘the key’, Nico must put aside all he believes, all he understands about his time and his world if he is help Veluria stop events leading inexorably to a rift in history and the destruction of both their worlds.
The Shadow of This World:
Review, Excerpt, Blurb
HERE
Venice. 1515. A time of political intrigue. A time of internecine war, upheaval and deadly deals.
What history knows of this time and place is on the brink of monumental change. Change that could thrust the post-apocalyptic future into another Dark Age.
Two operatives from the future—Veluria, a trained courtesan from the Sisterhood and Andreas, an assassin from the rival Council of the Brotherhood—breach the shadows linking past and future. Tasked with identifying and derailing events that threaten both worlds, the operatives turn to the most influential powermongers of the age, the Medici family.
Three brothers, three men with secrets and unusual powers.
And the one man who can derail everything.
Meet Andreas, an operative of the Brotherhood, a secret society from the future that works behind the scenes to keep their post-apocalyptic world on an even keel. Aligned against the Sisterhood in a power struggle over how to guide the civilian population away from ruinous war and aggression, the competing phantom seats of power each detect deviations in the timeline.
Prognostications, science and faith once more do battle for the minds and hearts of men. And Venice again becomes the stage upon which the fate of the world hinges.
The Council, the governing body of the Brotherhood, dispatches Andreas, their most skilled operative back to a time when the researchers suspect that events deviate from their documented course.
Andreas choses to insert himself into the religious seat of power, becoming a simple cleric, the eyes and ears of a Monsignor with ambition and a thirst for secrets. The subterfuge gives Andreas access to the underbelly of 1515 Venice, and a chance encounter with Veluria and a mysterious stranger convince him he is on the trail of ‘the key’.
All assume ‘the key’ to be a deviant event derailing the timeline.
But is it?
Andreas is a man of faith … and very particular tastes. His brush with Veluria—with her essence, her powers—leaves him obsessed and desirous to possess all that she is, all that she represents.
And he will stop at nothing to have his heart’s desire.
The Shadow of This World:
Review, Excerpt, BlurbHERE
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