Title: Insight Kindling
Series: The Call to Search Everywhen #2
Publication Date: January 13, 2015
Publisher: Czidor Lore, LLC
Calla faces charges against her for changing the past. Her use of the Travel Glasses resulted in the creation of two writings that affected the lives of Edgar, the inventor of the Travel Glasses, and Valcas, their prior owner. Now Calla must explain her actions before the Time and Space Travel Agency.
The hearing does not end well. The travel commissioner finds Calla guilty as charged and forces her to choose between two harsh penalties.
Despite the risk of becoming lost herself, Calla accepts a dangerous travel mission that may help her find her father. She teams up with a group of talented travelers. While working with them, she soon discovers that she has a special travel talent of her own.
Pursued by the sentient being of white light that’s been tracking her father’s bloodline, Calla fears her newfound talents may not be enough to protect her and her teammates before they complete their mission.
Insight Kindling is the second installment in The Call to Search Everywhen serial series.
Excerpt from Insight Kindling!
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “You knew my father,” I said.
“Plaka was the only true friend I ever had.”
“Tell me about him.”
Valcas shrugged. “I haven’t seen your father in many years—more than two decades according to Earth years. I wonder if I would recognize him now.”
I felt tears beginning to build, but I blinked them back and tried to sound angry. “That’s not what I meant. What was he like? Where did you meet him?”
“Tell me something, Calla—” Valcas stood up as he spoke. “How comfortable was your life before meeting me? Would you like to return to that? Take some time to think before answering.”
I huffed. “You’re very good at evading my questions.”
“You self-righteously assume that you deserve my answers.” Valcas sneered as he turned to leave the room.
“Wait! I’m sorry—” I clenched my fists. No. “I’m not sorry that I escaped you and took your travel glasses with me. I feared for my life. You locked me in a room for four days. I had no idea that you were supposed to be protecting me.”
Valcas dipped his head and frowned. I felt bad. For the first time since meeting him, he looked like the one who’d been fooled.
“Why are you still protecting me? Is that how you keep him…alive?” I nearly swallowed my last word. I’d assumed that my father had been dead for a long time. I’d accepted that, but there was hope in not knowing for sure. Maybe, I thought, it was Valcas who refused to let go, to believe that his friend was gone forever.
“I’ve protected you only because Plaka asked it of me.” Valcas stepped nearer to me, tight-jawed, looking down at me over crossed arms.
“Oh, so then the story wasn’t true about you needing me to stand in for a bride?” The pitch of my voice rose higher the more I tried to keep it under control. “How do you expect me to believe anything you say?”
“Yes, it was true,” he spat. “It just so happened that the situation also gave me a good reason to keep a closer eye on you.”
“Why not ask my mother how I was doing? You seem to know her pretty well.” I frowned, crossing my arms too. I never asked him to protect me. And, as far as I knew, he wasn’t very good at it.
“I went to prison for you.”
“That sounds like a good place for a kidnapper to me!”
Valcas gritted his teeth but said nothing as he left the room.
I sat in silence, waiting. I felt chilled, betrayed and, now that Valcas was gone, lonely.
Author Bio:
Chess Desalls recently authored the first two installments of the YA time travel series, The Call to Search Everywhen. She's a longtime reader of fantasy and sci-fi novels, particularly young adult fiction. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys traveling and trying to stay in tune on her flute.
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