Excerpt: Clockwork Conspiracy

The trouble with the Chosen was…you never knew what they were coming for. Sometimes they'd just appear, from nowhere, with no warning, like a cold wind on a warm day. Those tended to be the worst days for people who didn't want to comply with what they were being asked. Those days were the worst for the Chosen too, though they'd never admit it. Couldn't admit it, because admission would be weakness and the Chosen could not be weak. And so instead they soldiered on, heads high, weapons ready, preparing to do the work required of them in all moments and at all times.

Nic did the same, and when she wasn't working, she stayed in the dormitories. Others created vast social lives for themselves in the neighborhoods surrounding their parishes, but she preferred her own company and her books. When she graduated, she expected she'd go home again, but she didn't really know where home was, and she wasn't ready to find out if anything waited for her there anyhow. She knew there was money, and that there might be responsibilities, but she had no idea, at this point, that she was Lady Veronica Forsythe, or that this would mean anything in her future.

She also had no idea that the Church knew this fact about her (how could she, when she didn't know it herself,) but she would find out all of that soon enough. Sooner than she expected, because her graduation would come and she would be taken home again. She would meet everyone who knew her before she'd gone away, except, obviously, for her parents. It wouldn't be the happy occasion they expected it to be, but they'd be happy to have her back, because having her was better than not having her. They'd come to depend on the idea that having her back would fix everything that had gone wrong.

They would be wrong about that too.