My friend Kimbra Wilder Gish and I are collaborating on a young adult fantasy project. Here are is our current working pitch for the resulting manuscript, which we are currently editing for submission.
Hidden Princess, Hidden Prince
Like everyone in the Summerholds, a remote island kingdom on the northern edges of the world, fifteen-year-old Aislin has been raised on epic tales of heroism and romance. So when Eigilborn kisses her, she is tempted to throw caution to the winds. If she must choose between being a star-crossed lover and a queen, sacrificing all for love seems like the more romantic and less suicidal choice.
Aislin thinks like this because she is the hidden daughter of a murdered queen. Now that the usurper lies at death’s door, her protectors intend to reveal her existence to the world. They will do whatever it takes to get her on the throne, no matter who they have to kill – or who she needs to marry. And in the marriage market, she is worth more than a mere princess. Like her mother, she can control the Signs that protect her people from the Nameless, deadly shadow beings who once ruled as gods. No man can be Prince-Regent whose wife is not a Daughter of the Signs.
For Aislin, Eigilborn’s love is precious precisely because he thinks she is an ordinary girl. So when he reveals he is a a spy and a rebel prince and asks her to run away with him, she does not know what to do. She isn’t the kind of girl who would risk everything for love, but if she is too careful, she might end up marrying the man whose father murdered her parents.