This is ONLY for readers who have completed Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green. If you haven’t yet done so, please don’t even consider reading it. The spoilers begin immediately. Come back after you’ve completed Tea.
Spoiler Warning
If you have not completed Spilling the Tea, please don’t even consider reading this.
Specifically, you must have read The Valkyries Are Flying which is the final, ridiculously long ‘novella’ in the Tea Collection.
Otherwise, this includes HUGE spoilers for any reader who hasn’t completed the whole of (or doesn’t remember) the last four long novellas in Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green which all take place between Market Forces and Orange.
If you haven’t read Spilling the Tea yet, you can read it in Kindle Unlimited (as always) or buy it as an ebook or paperback from Amazon here.
OK … I think it should be just us now.
And breathe.
Welcome to my “Where’s the next damn book? I’m waiting as (im)patiently as I know how to” crowd.
Grab a cuppa, here comes the first part of the preview 🥳
My editor has not yet had her magical fingers on it, so please forgive any errors.
Half an Orange in Gretna Green
Chapter One
Saturday 1st May 2021, Gateway Cottage, Gretna Green, Scotland. Barely sunrise.
I was tucked safely between my little Bichon Frise, Tilly, who guarded the small of my back, and my bond mate’s chest. It should be the best place in the world.
Even deeply asleep, Rollo was ebullient through our bond, filled with righteous triumph about our victory against Leif at the opening of the Viking parliament.
See, Niki, that’s how you should feel when you win a headline challenge. Stop angsting about a dead slimeball and enjoy your weekend.
Instead, I’d woken up angry for the third or fourth time in the last few hours. No—not angry—incandescent with the damn Galician Emperor.
And I couldn’t shake the idea that the Recorder had cheated.
I tried to let it go, breathed in Rollo’s seashore scent, felt Tilly stretch as if she sensed my relaxation, and began to drift—
only to almost groan aloud when annoyance surged back with teeth, sharper than before.
My mind was far too busy for sleep. I slipped out of bed and into the bathroom.
My subconscious didn’t want to rest.
It wanted to fix shit.
Working out why Alphonse thought the agreement between the royals, the realms and the power was optional had just climbed to the top of my list.
I would reread the translation of that agreement and remind myself of everything else he wasn’t doing. Then I planned to summon him and ruin his Saturday by spelling it all out in painstaking detail. I even had a plan to get around his habit of being ‘unavailable’.
Then I wanted to slap him hard and—
I cut off my spiralling thoughts, met my own eyes in the mirror, and told myself firmly, “No, Niki. You do not want to be responsible for assaulting an emperor.”
Except, honestly, just between us, I kinda did.
I’d get away with one good, hard slap. Afterwards, I could take a leaf out of Alphonse’s book and apologise profusely and at length—once his bloody nose had been mopped up.
I sighed. That wouldn’t match my team’s current goal to be Smart.
Slaps then Smarts definitely didn’t have the right ring to it—but maybe—just this once?
I cut along the outside deck from the bathroom to the breakfast room, so I didn’t disturb the sleepyheads in my bedroom.
It was a beautiful morning. Which, oddly, deepened my annoyance.
I passed the empty blue pot on the deck outside the breakfast room doors—I should decide what to put in that.
Trying hard not to sound as grumpy as I felt, I managed, “Good morning, Dola. May I have coffee?”
My mug arrived with a graphic of a goat’s head on the inside of the rim. The outside said, Did you know goats have accents which change as they age?
Dola and I were on the same page. I guessed my equerry had been researching Galicia.
“Good morning, Niki. Was your sleep not restful?”
“No. I tossed and turned. When I did fall asleep, copies of the agreement between the realms and the power were attacking me. I just managed to wake myself up before I punched Alphonse. Which is good. I wouldn’t have forgiven him if I’d hurt Tilly.”
My mug was odd. I was about to ask how she’d discovered such a random thing. Did the goats’ accents change from French to German if they wandered too far over a mountain? I mean, the Alps ran through about eight countries, didn’t they? That could make for confused goats.
Dola, thankfully unaware that scenes and various earwormy songs from The Sound of Music were now running through my mind, was all business.
“As you are up, I have updates. Peter emailed. He reports his mother is now home and recovering well. He is eager to return and thanks us for our understanding. The Boy Wonder will be back with us early next week.”
“That’s good. I need to deal with Caitlin’s complaint and onboard him properly, as we agreed.”
And then, hopefully, she’d stop calling him Boy Blunder.
Although now I thought about it, perhaps I’d just ban nicknames from workspaces. We hadn’t been allowed to use them at the registration office I’d worked in for eighteen years. I was starting to see there might be a good reason for that.
Dola, still unaware of my internal monologue, continued smoothly, “Secondly, I have rewatched the challenge footage multiple times. You were busy staying alive, but have you yet viewed it, concentrating on the reactions of the Emperor and Empress?”
She knew I hadn’t. My sentient house usually missed nothing. Oh, but perhaps she’d been taking care of her new daughter, Cassie?
How did you ‘take care’ of a baby house? I sent a quick invocation to the Goddess Ordinata, hoping I’d recalled correctly that she was the one who helped you focus on what you were supposed to be doing before answering Dola.
“Not since you asked us to approve it for posting on the Rainbow Network last night. What did you spot?”
I drank some coffee. It was the perfect temperature, as always.
The goat stared up at me. Was it cute or creepy? On balance, I decided pretty cute. Did it have a Galician accent?
Rationality crept in as the level in my mug went down. Goats’ accents probably referred to something else.
Oh dear—Ordinata must be busy today. I pulled myself together without her help and watched the wall screen as Dola ran the video of my challenge from the previous evening.
This time, instead of focusing on me standing stock-still and waiting for Leif to decide whether to attack, the footage zoomed in on the Galician royals.
They both watched intently as I stood in the centre of the challenge arena, and Leif circled. Sabella’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly. She’d been unusually quiet last night. Alphonse gave a tiny shrug in response to whatever his wife had said.
When Leif finally struck, the leaders’ regnal powers shot out to hold him. Dola’s slow-motion playback showed Ad’Rian twitching a finger and creating the circular violet lightning of his regnal power as it surrounded Leif. His power arrived first, but the other royals’ reactions were almost inhumanly fast—apart from Rollo’s. But then he hadn’t known my plan. Still, it only took seconds before Leif was wrapped securely in a restraining net of six powers.
I scrutinised the Galician pair. “Huh. Nothing apart from that faint orange glow.” There was no rebellion or resistance on their faces. Frustration, maybe, from Alphonse, and a smooth, tight, hard-to-define expression—possibly suppressed anger or even shock—on Sabella’s. Was their lack of help unintentional? “What are you thinking, Dola?”
“I wonder if his regnal power has been bound in some fashion?”
We might be on the same wavelength. “When you say bound—how?”
“I am reading an interesting series of books at the moment where wicked men sometimes intentionally bind or deliberately break the magical powers of younger women. But it could apply to men too. Alphonse was young when he and Sabella met. He may have been easier to manipulate or train. Neither member of the Imperial Galician house appears happy about letting you down.”
“So you’re thinking someone or something might have blocked or stolen Alphonse’s regnal power?” My gut said nope.
But then I thought about Breanna and Elliot; they hadn’t realised their problem until ten days ago. So it wasn’t a completely crazy idea. “Like the Canmores did to House Albidosi?”
Her response came swiftly. “I do not know. He does not appear defiant. Perhaps he cannot wield the regnal power correctly or has none. I suspect the church he is always so cautious about offending may be the guilty party. But I have no evidence … yet.”
“Let’s see if I can find out.” I shrugged my Recorder’s robe on over my pyjamas. It covered my jammies, and I planned to crawl back into bed once I’d dealt with Alphonse.
I savoured the last mouthful of coffee. “I’m going to use the Gateway time slip to remind myself about the agreement, summon him, wave it at him, and get answers. If I go now, it doesn’t need to interrupt the celebratory weekend Rollo has planned.”
Fixing Alphonse before breakfast felt exactly how I wanted the shiny new version of me—the one who was scheduled to arrive on Monday—to behave.
I landed in the Gateway, chatted to the Book about the agreement, and moved behind its throne to the rear of the anvil. I placed the Recorder’s star on it and checked my surroundings. The Gateway was almost completely empty. At six a. bloody m. that was hardly a surprise, but Alphonse wasn’t entitled to a night’s sleep. If I couldn’t sleep, why the hell should he?
I wanted him to get with the program of progress for all the realms.
I locked the gates in conjunction with the power, but as I said, “I summon Emperor Alph—” the power rushed towards me and lifted me up. It wanted me to pause and listen.
The telltale scent of seaside ions tickled my nose.
We’d worked hard to improve our communication. Recently it had sent artwork to the Book and much clearer images to my mind. Talking to something without words—only emotions, physical and sensory input—made it difficult to be certain what was being conveyed. Visual elements worked better for me.
But I got its message.
Don’t summon the emperor.
My “Whyyyy not?” came out somewhere between a wail and a plea.
The moment I dropped my shields, I rose higher, and a picture floated into my mind of colourful wooden children’s building blocks. They were badly scratched up, with three lines across each. They looked as if an angry three-toed cat had attacked them. I checked—they didn’t spell anything. It was just a half-built or maybe a half-destroyed square.
The power sensed my confusion and tried again. This time it offered large, toddler-sized jigsaw pieces with orange edges. The first showed Alejandro’s face, the next Princess Natalia and her husband Tomas with their seven-fold bond glowing around them. Next came Cisco, Sabella’s lovely brother, holding out a bottle of wine. And the last completely confused me—a picture of a river running around a mountain.
“You want me to summon the whole imperial family?”
No, that wasn’t right because, as the puzzle came together, there were pieces missing.
A clock with whirling hands was the next visual. I said, “I can tell you’re trying. I’m sorry if I’m being stupid, but do you mean I can do it later? Or that we need to wait for whoever—or whatever—is on the missing pieces?”
Damn it. Rollo and I deserved a peaceful weekend after the last few weeks.
I floated and thought about how far I’d come.
A page-a-day calendar was the next visual from the power. Several pages flipped.
Oh. All right. Waiting a few days worked better for me than spoiling our weekend. It was annoying—my hand was itching to greet the damn emperor’s face—and I still didn’t understand what we were waiting for.
I breathed and ran a quick exercise I’d got from a book. It was supposed to calm my fight-or-flight response. Maybe it would disperse my annoyance.
A little movie showing the Galician gate opening and their orange-clad priests coming into the Gateway played in my mind. Some did what I’d seen them do in real life—stuck their heads in before backing out again. Others walked down the orange sector, across the centre, and over towards the green gate to Caledonia.
Then the colour faded from the movie. The power sometimes did that to show me something was in the past. A boy walked through the orange gate to the centre and left via the green gate. As he exited, the image morphed into a man of about twenty-five returning and heading back towards Galicia. Was that Cisco?
I tried to take twenty years off his current age in my mind—the way you do when you’re trying to work out which other TV shows you’ve seen an actor in. Honestly, I couldn’t tell. And now the power was busy showing me a parade of priests. Tall, short, old and young, skinny and plumper, coming and going.
Then a larger, older man. Actually—no. Not so much large as normal-sized, but with a substantial beer belly under his voluminous, intricately patterned robes. He waddled to where the iron boundary across the Orange sector would have been. But I could see it wasn’t up. Perhaps he didn’t know that? He simply reversed course and waddled back down the orange sector to the gate.
I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure whoever this man was, I hadn’t seen him in the Gateway since I’d ascended.
Perhaps his information was out of date. Or maybe this brief clip was also in the past. I’d changed the barriers back to how they’d worked before my gran’s one-in, one-out rules. Currently, they allowed travellers to cross the centre freely, provided they were simply in transit. With the increase in trade, even of smaller items, the change had minimised traffic jams around the edges of the centre since we got so much busier, and it had worked well.
“Are we waiting for him?”
At my question, the image of the priest shifted to show an aura of orange power around him.
“Is he the one who messed with Alphonse’s regnal power? Has he stolen it?”
The power waggled me slightly in the air, which reminded me I was still floating. I sent it a clear message that I’d like to be put down and repeated my question. But the sense I got back was yes … and no.
Which was no damn help at all.
I know OK?
That wasn’t enough … right?
Well, in good news, the next part, Chapter Two of Half an Orange, will explain why Niki feels the ‘new her’ who was scheduled to arrive on Monday … has now arrived.
Minor teeny-tiny ‘spoiler’:
On Monday 3rd May 2021, it will be 100 days since Niki arrived in Gretna Green and met the power so violently on the path to Gateway Cottage. Niki has opinions about it. As you might expect … so does HRH.
So I thought 100 days before Half an Orange is published might be a fun day to share that chapter.
Check back on July 22nd to read it.
Right now, you could read the updated description of Half an Orange here here on my site. It has some pretty graphics. 🥰
Or you could take a look at the evolution of the final cover design along with some hilarious but completely untrue 🤥 (Huh who knew there was a Pinocchio emoji!?)
OK, some … mostly … true conversations with my cover designer about why the orange point on the Recorder’s star needed to be ‘sort of melty.’
Or you can pop back on July 22nd for the second part of this preview.
The obligatory promotion follows … but remember I adore my KU readers and don’t care whether you use it or buy the book. BUT if you plan to read it in KU, I would be very grateful if you would please add it to one of your Amazon wish lists.
Any wish list will do it. In any country.
(It really helps Amazon to realise that readers are excited about it and they do a little more promotion on my behalf.)
Half an Orange in Gretna Green
will release on the 30th October 2026.
It will be available to read in Kindle Unlimited, ebook and paperback.
You can preorder or add it to your wishlist now.
Preorder if you want the ebook, but if you intend to read in KU or buy the paperback (Note: I can’t do preorders for paperbacks), please add it to your wish list so you will be notified as soon as it is available.
Thank you very much ❤️
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