Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Amanda Foody
Mentee Name: Alison Brown
Title: THE PHANTOM, THE SPY, AND THE CROWN
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 92,000

Pitch:

Dreyden would rather play soldier than prince.

Elika joined the Royal Army so she can assassinate the king.

When a criminal organization steals a shipment of magic, Dreyden and Elika join forces to unravel a conspiracy to overthrow their empire…unaware of the secrets they’re concealing from each other.

Marie Antoinette meets James Bond, TRUTHWITCH-style.

Excerpt:

Bullets cracked over the moonlit cobblestones of the Pont de Couleurs bridge. Prince Dreyden Ryecove crouched behind a statue of his ancestor and reloaded his musket, fingers deft in the familiar movement of powder and ball.

When he’d volunteered to join the regiment guarding the Kaisian shipment of magic, he’d expected drunken theatre-goers, not a full-scale ambush. The cargo contained consumable magic capable of blasting buildings to rubble and forcing entire armies to their knees, and its delivery to le Quartier Militaire was supposed to be confidential.

Someone had talked.

Across the bridge, a soldier screamed and staggered back, clutching her shoulder. Dreyden cursed. How many of his comrades remained in action? Ten? Twelve?

Church bells tolled, echoing through the city boulevards and out over the dark water. The drifting gun-smoke parted, revealing the toll-house at the bridge’s northern bank where enemy muskets aimed through the leaded glass windows. He leveled his gun.

“You know who has to be behind this,” Henri Tatsuko warned beside him.

“Bleeding skies,” Dreyden muttered. “Don’t say Ghosts.”

Criminals rumoured to slip through walls and vanish into the shadows, the Ghosts’ random acts of violence terrorised citizens. No one knew their motives, and if they’d organised enough to steal the magic, the capital could descend into chaos.

But if the Ghosts were the thieves and Dreyden managed to catch one, he could finally prove to his father that he belonged in the army, not the palace.