Orpheum (Part One): a Dark Fantasy Romance

I always knew music was powerful. Even though I rebelled against the marathon forced practice sessions that turned my adolescence into a prison camp, there were moments-even in the mechanical repetition of practice-where I stopped being a robot and felt a kind of transcendence, a connection to something deeper. I wasn't raised to be religious, but in those fleeting spaces, often between beats in the tempo, my body seemed to go on playing by itself, while my awareness shifted to something greater. Almost like I was outside my body, sitting in the audience, feeling the music wash over me like a pounding surf, telling me to relax. To let go. To give in. But that was before I learned what music really was, and that it was capable of more than just pretty feelings and a mystical connection to a transcendental Other. That it was a weapon, which could cause great pain and destruction; that it was deeper and older than humanity; and that there were forces in the world that wanted to reclaim it for themselves. Orpheum is a young adult dark fantasy romance based on Eastern European history, the myths and literature of Orpheus and Pythagoras' theory of Musica Universalis, or the music of the spheres. This is PART ONE of the first book in the series.