Sword Dance: Volume 1

A.J. Demas

Jul 2019 · Sword Dance Ibhuku elingu-1 · Sexton's Cottage Books

Mayelana nale ebook

Five years ago, Damiskos’s brilliant military career was cut short, leaving him with a permanent disability and scars that are not all physical. Adrift and still grieving, he tries to find meaning in an unsatisfying job.

Work takes him to the remote seaside villa of an old friend, where, among an odd assortment of guests, he meets the eunuch sword-dancer Varazda. Enigmatic and beautiful but distinctly prickly, Varazda is the antithesis of the straightforward and serious Damiskos. Yet as they keep getting in each other’s way at the villa, their mutual dislike is complicated by a spark of undeniable attraction.

Then the villa’s guests begin to reveal their true characters and motives—no one here is what they seem—and Damiskos finds himself at the centre of a bizarre web of espionage, theft, and assassination. Varazda may need Damiskos’s help, but not as much as Damiskos, finally awakening to a new sense of life and purpose, needs Varazda.

Sword Dance is the first book in the Sword Dance trilogy, an m/nb romance set in an imaginary ancient world, with murderous philosophy students, sex acts named after fruit, and love blossoming in the midst of mayhem.

Mayelana nomlobi

A.J. Demas is an ex-academic who once studied and taught medieval literature. Now she looks after her two-year-old daughter and writes romances set in an imaginary world that is sort of like the ancient Mediterranean with the serial numbers filed off. She also publishes fantasy and historical fiction with a metaphysical twist as Alice Degan. She lives in Toronto.