Movies, Shows, & Books: BLOG TOUR: Crimson Cove by Eden Butler

We are so excited to kick off this exciting Blog Tour for Eden Butler's Crimson Cove, a New Adult Paranormal Romance! We will be sharing an exciting excerpt from the book! Plus, enter the awesome giveaway at the end of this post!

Follow the tour, HERE!

Genre:

New Adult

Paranormal Romance

Release Date:

December 31, 2015

Synopsis:

Ten years ago Janiver stole a kiss from the meanest boy in school.

He never forgot.

Senior year.

One minute before the tardy bell rang, Bane Illes would slip through the door.

He never smiled.

He never spoke.

Each date, that dark, dangerous boy gave Janiver Benoit a glance. And when she could not take another quiet stare, or the warmth that look sent over her skin, she took from Bane something he'd never give freely one lingering, soul knocking kiss.

Ten years later, her family needs her, and Janiver will have to face the one person she promised herself she'd never see again.

The dangerous wizard that might make leaving Crimson Cove the last thing she wants to do.

*Excerpt*

In the mirror on the back of the door I noticed Bane working his hands together, one of only a couple nervous ticks I knew he had. He had more runes on his skin than I remembered, peeking out beneath the cuff of his long gray t-shirt and others that became visible when he discarded his jacket. Mortals thought those were only tribal style tattoos. We let them think that. In fact, we didn’t explain anything to the mortals, even if they happened upon our world. Generally, if they sort out who and what we are, they’re too terrified or too convinced their mind is playing tricks on them to understand the complexities of magic. Bane defied explanation anyway. Mortals looking at him would see only what their eyes told them was true—that the rugged face likely came from a roughneck gene pool; that his stature was the result of hours spent honing and sharpening his physique, that his tattoos were clever designs some artist fashioned out of his imagination on slow shop nights. But none of it was true. No artist inked doodles into glyphs and forms at random. Every line, circle and etching on his skin had meaning. Those marks were runes, ancient symbols that engendered power; fine art that resulted from study, from sacrifice so that Bane would become more than a gifted wizard. He knew spells that time had buried, rhymes and hexes that evoked power, terror that mages and clerics of every conceivable study had blown into the winds of time. They were literally etched on his body. My gifts did not demand the sacrifice of blood and pain. But I had studied, not to Bane’s extent, but my runes were there—smaller, simpler, but still very much there. Mortals would never know what the symbols meant, but that didn’t mean their own instincts wouldn’t keep them from instinctual understanding they held an underlying strangeness and possibly danger. That much hadn’t changed in ten years. I shut the closet door with a kick of my boot and zipped my leather motorcycle jacket up with a noisy scratch. Bane gave me the once over again. I felt every square inch of my skin warm beneath that close examination, and realized maybe going back with him wasn’t the best idea. I hadn’t left Crimson Cove because of Bane Illes—I had left despite him. He was just the sort of man that could have easily kept me in that tiny town with his perfect not-a-smirk and the slow, hungry glances of those eyes. I’d left before Bane had convinced me to stay. I’d left because staying was all I’d wanted to do. “You look good.” That seemed a little too honest, something out of character for Bane to admit and he seemed to regret it the moment he spoke. That frown, the heavy dip of his eyebrows made him look annoyed by his own honesty. Years ago, when I leveled one soul-rattling kiss at him, after nine solid months of those silent stares, Bane had managed a handful of words—small promises I knew he didn’t mean. I’d spent years unable to pull them from my thoughts. But those promises and his just-uttered complement didn’t mean anything to me. It seemed odd, awkward to hear them now. Especially since I was there to do a job, not stroll down memory lane with him. Still, I’d been a lying fool to deny what he already knew. “Mr. Iles, so do you.” Time kept him frozen in my mind. Over the years I recalled those quick, slow glances he’d give me when Mr. Matthews would drone on too long in class. Those glances became longer, slower until we spoke wordlessly. A flick of his lashes, the hooded cast of his eyelids; my breath fanning over my teeth, my lips barely touching as I watched him—those silent moments spoke volumes, and now, sitting there letting him take me in, I wondered if it was the same for him. I wondered if Bane remembered how we were back then, silent and curious, longing and eager but held up by the confines of the classroom and the lives we lived outside of it. “No one calls me Mr. Iles unless they’re trying to get me to unload my wallet.” “Technically, I am trying to get you to unload your wallet.” He let that almost smile return and I got the feeling he was fighting his humor. “For a service.” That last word came out with the smallest hint of a growl and I tried to ignore the sweet little ache in the pit of my stomach. “Well, yeah,” I tried, standing straighter. The scent of his skin was thick, reminded me of the honeysuckle vines that lined the path around the town square. Blinking did not move my focus from that smell or what it did to my senses so I focused instead on the small bruise under his left eye. It was crescent shaped and turning yellow. “That service.” My voice came out in a rasp despite the jar in my throat when I cleared it. “Let’s discuss that. When were you attacked?” I nodded at the scrape and bruising on his face. Bane let the humor leave his features and the frown he gave teetered close to the scary side. “Two days ago.” “And you’re still busted up?” “I am not busted up.” Just like a wizard to get defensive. There was nothing worse than a man with a bruised ego along with a busted lip. Add that to a strong, connected wizard whose body should heal hours, not days after an attack and you’ve got the makings of some serious deflection and chest thumping. “Sorry,” I amended ignoring the frown fracturing the beautiful contours of his face. “I just thought you would have healed by now.” “I know.” Bane left the mattress with an ease that seemed practiced. A performance that reminded me of a peacock stretching his feathers, but I doubted Bane was the sort to grand stand for a woman. Least of all me. Instead, he closed my suitcase, snapping the lock before he pulled it from the mattress. “You done?” “Yeah.” He watched me turn off my lights, that hard gaze following me as the apartment darkened and I tugged a scarf and my bag on. Bane stared at me, a bit longer than necessary, with his jaw working. “I suspect, as does the Oracle, that they used dark magic to inflect the injuries.” Dark magic to hurt him, blood magic to take the Elam. This sounded like someone who knew what they were doing—the spells and curses would have required more than what both the Oracle and the Crimson Cove covens allowed its practitioners to perform. That had me thinking of the theft again, and my gift inched back to the Cove and the stolen Elam. Even from here, something felt unsettled, like a sting against my conscience, some unknowable thing that niggled at my awareness. Eyes closed tight, I inhaled, stretching my mind back to what I knew of the Elam, of all the times I’d passed by the town square yet ignored the talisman set there as something customary and usual. My gift took over, sliding my awareness beyond my apartment, through the busy street outside my building, from Brooklyn, Manhattan, through the park, until I could no longer make out the New York landscape, until land and rivers flew past me, dropping me into New Orleans, past the bayou, past the marsh and right into Crimson Cove with its lush pecan groves and the lands split between the higher and lower covens. In my mind I saw the amulet clearly—worn brass chains stretched out, imbedded into the wooden statue that made one column of the town square gazebo. Those chains connected out, layered beneath the wood awning, right beneath the earth, straight into the hum of energy that ran directly through the town, right into the ley lines that weaved around it. In the center of the Elam, concealed as the single eye of the statue’s whittled, masculine face, was an amulet carved from turquoise, the color dulled by the decades, but power humming from the center of its turtle-faced surface. The relic was as common to wizards as Founder’s Day was to the entire town. But as my mind prickled with the recall of the Elam’s surface, the beautiful craftsmanship and magical ability it took to fashion something that would veil us from the humans’ notice, that image became fractured. As I clamped my fingers into fists, trying to keep them from shaking, the Elam disappeared completely. “Damn. If the Elam is gone…” “You didn’t see it?” Bane asked, voice even, but clipped. “I saw it, then didn’t. Then…then there was blood.” “We’ve established that.” The breath released in a long sigh from my mouth. “If that’s true, then whoever took the Elam used Grant blood to conceal the theft. The spell concealing it was forfeited by the founders. Since there are only Grant and Rivers kin left from those lines…well. It could only be someone from one of those two covens.” The tension along my skull eased as I blinked my eyes open. A thought occurred to me. “The Oracle couldn’t trace it?”
Bane’s frown only deepened with my question and I took his arched eyebrow as answer enough to know I shouldn’t question him. As we walked down the hall and waited for the elevator, I realized that with Bane, one of the last sons of one of the founding covens being the one attacked, there surely would have been a full inquiry. Not only would the Oracle and his team investigate—that was coven protocol—but I assumed the Grants, Bane’s family, would have spared no expense in finding out who’d bloodied his face and taken his blood. “And they found nothing?” punched the Down button as though he had zero patience. There were several calluses across his knuckles, red with barely-healed scabbing. “The nothing is why I’m fetching you, Janiver.”

~~~~~

**About the Author**

Eden Butler is an editor and writer of New Adult Romance and SciFi and Fantasy novels and the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum. Her debut novel, a New Adult, Contemporary (no cliffie) Romance, Chasing Serenity launched in October 2013 and quickly became an Amazon bestseller.

When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.

She is currently living under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.

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