Page 1 of Inked in Emeralds (Inkbound #3)
As for Molly, she’s got her own plans on that front.
When she takes one last, forbidden trip over the golden wall that separates The Hollow from the opulence of Alabaster City in pursuit of a wealthy husband, disaster strikes.
An evening in the arms of the Crown Prince turns violent, and the stiletto heel of Molly’s glass slipper winds up buried in his chest. Harm comes to save the day but she’s too late.
Stuck on the wrong side of the wall with a maniacal king who should be dead, an evil sorcerer, and his pack of undead soldiers called “Jackals” on the hunt for the woman who fits the glass shoe, Harmony will have to rely on her wits to keep her and Molly hidden until they can plot their escape, and sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight…
After creating disguises for them both and landing a position as the palace falconer, Harmony is forced to rely on an unlikely group of allies, including charming but secretive Second Prince Duncan and The O’Donnellys — a family of smugglers who’d just as soon sell her for parts as help her escape.
But danger lurks around every corner. Whispers — those who possess some measure of magic — still exist in Alabaster, and they aren’t afraid to use their powers to ferret out the woman with the missing stiletto.
As the walls start closing in, Harmony uncovers the monarchy’s darkest secrets: The should-be-dead King is actually being kept “alive” through black magic, and the people of both The Hollow and Alabaster City are puppets under the control of a sadistic sorcerer with a plan that has served him well for nearly a century…
Strip the poor of magic, leaving them too weak to resist.
Keep the rich too comfortable to bother.
Revolutionary spirit ignited, Harm realizes she can’t just save her and Molly. She must figure out how to tear the whole power structure down, and to do so, she’ll need an army. When Prince Duncan offers his help, she wants to trust him, but there is no question he’s hiding something.
Something big.
As the two grow closer and the prince professes his love, Harmony’s dreams about the dark, handsome stranger only grow more intimate.
But she needs to keep her head in the game if she has any chance of protecting her and Moll.
After a series of missteps almost get them caught, Harmony realizes they are on borrowed time.
She and the O’Donnelly’s stage a rescue of those falsely imprisoned for Moll’s “crime”, and they finally make a run for it.
But the sorcerer’s Jackals are hot on their trail.
Prince Duncan comes to their aid, and we learn his secret.
He is a Whisper himself with the amazing yet terrible ability to turn into a mindless fighting machine much like a Viking berserker at the cost of both his physical well-being and his sanity.
He defeats the Jackals, and they escape to join forces with famed revolutionary, The Speaker.
Not quite a Shout, but far more powerful than a Whisper, The Speaker’s abilities are second only to the sorcerer’s himself, and he’s willing to give his life to tear down the gilded wall that separates the rich from the poor and bring magic back to the people.
Their group travels to a village The Speaker has built in the treetops far away, where there are hundreds of Whispers who have been waiting for Harmony’s prophesied arrival to stage their coup.
The Speaker gives her a magical jeweler’s loupe to help her develop the true strength of her magic as a Tinker, who can see the inner workings of things and patterns that others don’t.
But when she’s unable to figure out how to truly connect with her Tinker magic, and a pissed off witch from the outside world named Almira starts trying to destroy the very fabric of their universe, it seems like a long shot.
Things get bleaker when they meet up with the sorcerer and his Jackals for the battle royale.
As fighting reaches a fever pitch, The Speaker insists that Harmony leave so he can finish the job, and he finally reveals the whole truth.
His destiny is to die here and take the evil Sorcerer down with him.
Hers is to collect three magical items and learn valuable lessons on her journey that will help her defeat the enemy bent on destroying her.
She has both gained some knowledge of her circumstances as well as a magical jeweler’s loupe, which allows her to see and manipulate the filaments of magic that make up the world to create even more complex inventions.
She realizes she’s trapped in the pages of a fairytale book, and has done all she can in Alabaster.
To complete her destiny, she needs to “turn the page” and move on to the next story.
Harmony, Molly, and Fetch approach The Shadow Abyss, and she knows she has to make the leap.
But to do so, she must leave both this world and Duncan behind and turn the page…
literally. As The Speaker gleefully gives his life in a blaze of glory, Duncan encourages her to leap for the dog-eared edge of their flat “world” and turn the page, carrying her, Moll, and Fetch to the next tale in their adventure, leaving Duncan behind to rebuild his fractured kingdom.
Book two, Inked in Onyx opens with Harmony, Molly, and Fetch as they are flung from one world into the next and find themselves plunged into icy waters with a pirate ship looming in the distance.
Before they can swim away in terror, they are plucked from the water by a flying Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.
Harmony and Molly are relieved to find that they have been rescued by the mystical pair and have already made friends in this new world.
Little do they know that they’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire…
Bell and Pan bring them to an island called Neverland.
Here, as they get warm and dry, they meet a group of pre-teen orphans under Bell and Pan’s care called The Lost Boys, one of whom is clearly a version of Cissy Petway, a little girl they knew from The Hollow.
Harm and Moll begin to realize that they are trapped inside a fairytale book, and that Cissy exists in more than one story.
They are still grappling with this news when Pan begins to tell them all about the evil deeds of his mortal enemy, Captain Hook.
Years before, the notorious pirate stole a magical clock from Tink and Pan it’s needed to ensure that Pan would stay young forever, but before he could get away, a massive crocodile named Noru snatched the clock—and Hook’s hand—and took off to a nightmarish place filled with monsters called The Weeping Fen.
Now, Pan and Hook are in a never-ending battle to get to the clock.
A battle Harmony must join, when a letter The Speaker slipped into her bag lets her know that it is the key to her own destiny.
She must retrieve the clock before she can turn the page to the next story and save her homeland, and to do so, she and Moll will have to betray their newfound friends.
As Harm tries to figure out how to leave Neverland to begin her journey to find the clock, she walks in on Pan practicing his knife throwing skills.
When she gets closer, she sees that the target is the wanted poster of a very familiar face.
She is left reeling when she finds out that the dark stranger who has been plaguing her dreams for years is the notorious Captain Hook himself.
This evil pirate is clearly a part of her destiny…
A week flies by in Neverland as Bell and Pan plot their next attempt at finding the massive, clock-carrying croc as he’s soon due to emerge from his lair and go on his next rampage.
Harm does her best to learn about this new world and make her own plans for her and Moll to leave Neverland, along with building some new inventions she hopes will help them track down the croc before anyone else does.
But as Moll falls more in love with the young Lost Boys, slipping into the role of a mother figure to Cissy, Caleb, and Tristan, Harm realizes there’s something off about Pan and Bell, and the idyllic facade of Neverland and its inhabitants begins to slip.
She holds those thoughts close to her heart to assuage her guilt as she, Fetch, and Moll escape to take their own shot at the clock in the croc, only to find themselves scooped up by Captain Hook and his crew.
At first, they fear that the bloodthirsty pirates might kill them.
But when Moll shows them some of Harm’s inventions and they see her Whisper magic, Hook decides to keep them on as indentured servants with only one way out; Help him get the clock before the croc hibernates again, and he will let them go free with their heads still attached to their bodies.
Harmony and Moll agree, with a plan to use Hook to get the clock and steal it from him later.
As they head on their journey, we start to see that several other characters from the previous story world also exist in this one.
They hire the smuggling O’Donnellys to be their guides to The Weeping Fen, and she and Hook wind up in front of a crystal ball with Gayelette, who tells of their shared future.
Harm is a princess from a place called C’an Saas, and in order to get back there, she will need to get the clock and move onto the next story.
Hook’s destiny is also tied to the clock, but they agree to become allies despite their mutual distrust.