by Katie Hudson (@katiebhudson)
YA Romantasy
Agents can request additional materials via our Agent Request Form.
Query
I am thrilled to share with you: LUST-BORN, a YA Romantasy standalone with series potential complete at 87,000 words. This ‘love or die’ fairy tale features a romantic competition akin to The Rose Bargain by Sasha Peyton Smith and a whimsical, enchanted atmosphere similar to that in Once Upon A Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber.
As the only lust-born child of the Goddess of Love, eighteen-year-old Nell has been consigned to being a caretaker for her mortal father and an outsider in her mother’s court. But when a death curse poisons her body, she enters her mother’s Ludus Games, a divine matchmaking competition. Victory grants immortality. Losing costs her life.
To win, Nell must compete against her half-siblings to recreate a classic fairy tale between unknowing mortals. But when she is tasked with matchmaking a lowly servant and the very prince who just broke her heart, she finds that her greatest obstacle to victory is herself.
To make matters worse, when Marcus—the intimidating, yet attractive son of the Death Goddess and Nell’s childhood companion—begins interfering with her every move, she’s forced to confront sinister secrets lurking beneath the game…as well as her own budding feelings. To claim her victory, Nell will have to choose between her life and the love she always believed could conquer anything—even death.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Texas A&M University and spend my days creating content as a Marketing Manager at the same university. The first several years of my career, I was a high school English and Theatre teacher. I am a part of my local writers’ group and have attended three DFW Writers conferences. Theme Park Press published my memoir, Katie Earns Her Ears, about my time interning at Walt Disney World.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
Though my mother is the goddess of love, it was lust that created me.
It would be easier if all I felt was lust. Lust is hungry. It goes no deeper than its need to be satisfied. If I was driven by lust alone, I could walk out of this room right now and find a new feast elsewhere. Instead, I stare hard at my hands, using every ounce of my strength to keep my grief trapped in the tremble of my fingers.
“We have to end this courtship,” Derek’s voice is slow, unsure. But the words are out there. I can’t unhear them.
He’s been acting strange for days now. He skipped all our mid-afternoon garden walks and didn’t bring me extra candles during yesterday’s storm. He always checks on me when there’s thunder. Even when it’s the middle of the night. I had hoped I was wrong, but I rarely am.
I stand, leaving him sitting on the edge of my bed. Well, his bed, in his palace, on his invitation. Practically everything in this room is his—even my hairbrush. A gift, he had said when he presented it to me. Not pity, but love, I told myself as I accepted each treasure.
“Why?” A thousand words run through my mind, but this is the only one I’m able to squeeze past my tightening throat.
“Because I don’t love you anymore.” His eyes are still downcast, his long lashes brushing the freckles on his dark cheeks. His springy hair is loose today, falling around his head like sun rays, mocking the darkness enveloping my heart. “Not like I thought I did.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He was the one who pursued me, not the other way around. I would’ve been happy finding a lower-rank husband who was simply kind and had enough money to help care for my father. Derek picked me out of a crowd upon my arrival to the capital, where I was to stay for a short time as a favor to my aunt from the queen.
When I met his gaze across a stuffy ballroom, I didn’t know who he was. All I knew was that a handsome man with an open-mouthed smile looked at me as if I had diamonds embroidered into my skin. I was so shocked by the silent interaction that I believed my inherited magic to have sparked inadvertently to life, drawing him near with forced attraction. But it wasn’t that. Derek marveled at me of his own free will.
It took only a kind word and his dimpled laugh for me to marvel back.
I loved you the moment I saw you, he told me after that night.
My mother brought us together, I had convinced myself. It was her way of looking after me since she couldn’t be physically present. She was offering me a relationship worth more than paying off Father’s gambling debts or providing a home with no leaks in the roof.
“This is your parents’ doing, isn’t it?” I suspect.
When Derek doesn’t answer, I let out a huff and turn away. I can’t look at him.
“I’m sorry,” his voice is small. “You know they disapprove—”
“Don’t,” I cut him off.
We’re supposed to overcome our obstacles together. Take on his parents’ objections side-by-side. Buy back my mortal family’s ancestral home. Make the kingdom a better place. That’s the plan—the only one I have.
“You’re making a mistake,” I tell him.
I understand where his parents’ fears come from. They’re a monarchy founded and respected for their lack of corrupt, godly blood. Giving me a crown would be harmful to their reign… but shouldn’t love be greater?
Derek rocks back on his thighs. Slowly, he lifts his dark eyes to mine. Whatever resolve his father beat into him to have this conversation breaks.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, the tight coils of his hair swaying back and forth. “Maybe this is a mistake.”
I wouldn’t need my magic to change his mind. I could simply beg him for his love. He’d take back his words with my pleas, just as his father’s pleas led to him agreeing to the breakup in the first place. Back and forth he’d hurtle between us, each handoff leaving another bruise on his delicate skin.
He’s trembling. He looks so beaten. This is what our courtship—what I’m—doing to him. I can’t recall a single story from my mother’s court that says love is supposed to be like this—begged for and reluctantly accepted.
“It’s no use, Derek.” My eyesight goes fuzzy. I wipe my face with my sleeve. “You deserve better than this. And I deserve…to be fought for.”
He shoots to his feet, reaching to pull me into a hug, but I turn. He settles for wrapping his strong arms around me from behind, pulling my back to his warm chest. He smells like our first kiss from the night of that ball—musky and sweet.
I can’t be here, with him, another moment longer. Looking at his face makes my chest hurt. So, despite his objections, I dismiss him. Then I pack my things, leaving the hairbrush, and write to Father and Aunt Miranda, telling them to expect me home soon.
#
Aunt Miranda says the water of our family’s forest can wash away any sorrow. That’s why my first order of business, after I kiss Father hello, is to go for a stream bath. I float in the slow current, grabbing hold of a root to keep from drifting. The ancient giant oaks lining the shore shoot into the sky, creating my own personal nest. Their thick canopies block near all of the harsh blue above. Good. There’s too much sky in the capital. Here, with my long hair—the same tawny brown as the stream bed—rippling with the water, I feel I could be a part of the forest, as much as the ants and the moss. If I’m the forest, then I’m older than this pain, older than Derek’s family name and their reign, older than civilization itself.
A branch cracks. I grab the neckline of my chemise, ensuring it hasn’t dipped too low. The current landowner’s children are old enough to roam the forest on their own, but not old enough to understand privacy. But it’s Aunt, riding up the path on Red, my chestnut mare.
“That was a quick reunion,” her unapologetic voice warms my ears.
“I knew you’d follow.”
“So it’s your infantile father you’re avoiding?” she scoffs. “Don’t blame you.”
That earns her a chastising glare, which she pretends not to see.
“We both know he doesn’t mean any harm,” I say. “Besides—my time in the capital is done.”
“They kick you out?”
“I chose to leave. Derek and I…we’re…” The words get caught in my swelling throat.
She sighs deeply, and the tiny pebbles of the shore rattle as her boots drop from Red’s stirrups to them. “You don’t need him.”
Her voice is a sharp force, the kind that precedes a daring, terrible revolt. When I was five years old, she received a letter laying out everything Father had done: sold the manor to pay his debts, lost my bedroom furniture in a game of cards, and only put food on our table through the charity of concerned villagers. A true disgrace to his lordly title.
The manor meant nothing to Aunt Miranda. And Father? They’d never gotten along. The only thing that could have made her give up her uninhibited freedom and ride straight back to her ancestral home was me.
I push off the muddy stream bed, splashing as I sit up, now a rock the current must bend around.
“I’m fine.”
Aunt Miranda rubs at her tan face, which looks so little like mine. Though I’m mortal like her and Father, I lack their features. But I don’t need to look like my mortal family for their forest’s waters to ease my sorrow. I’m already feeling better since arriving home. Just a bit…lost.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I confess, tears surfacing. “I had a plan with Derek. We were going to take care of Father. Give him a place to stay and servants that would be patient. You were going to be free.”
Her expression strains. “You know I don’t regret a moment I’ve spent looking after you.”
Regret, maybe not. But I’m not a fool. She never wanted children. It was her brother who went and seduced a goddess and got himself a war injury that led to a melancholy that led to a gambling addiction that led to his broken mind and empty pockets.
I’m not bitter that Aunt would have chosen differently for herself. That isn’t what this is. This is the understanding that I had found a way out, through my love for Derek, to take care of her for once. And now it’s all gone. Derek. Aunt Miranda’s freedom. Father’s easy life.
“Come here,” she beckons with a twitch of her fingers.
My bottom lip trembles as I stumble out of the stream and into her arms. As she holds me, a strange, unsettling ache grows in my chest. It’s sharp and cold—different from the suffocation of heartbreak. I duck my chin, looking to where my soaked chemise clings to my skin, exposing a dark spot between my breasts.
Strange. I hook my finger beneath the neckline and pull down. It’s not dirt on my skin, but a spot, like spilt black ink, branching out beneath my flesh. No. No.