New Release | Heavy Heart, Book IV of The Road to Ragnarök by @RochelleCA04 #99cents #newrelease
top of page
  • N. N. Light
    • Nov 15, 2022
    • 5 min read

New Release | Heavy Heart, Book IV of The Road to Ragnarök by @RochelleCA04 #99cents #newrelease



Title

Heavy Heart, Book IV of The Road to Ragnarök


Author

Rochelle L. Wilcox


Genre

Romantic Fantasy


Book Blurb


Freyr and Freyja believe the time finally has come to return to Asgard with Lia and Will by their sides, offer Yggdrasill’s fruit to Lia, and welcome her to their family. But Lia’s tasks aren’t complete. If the Norse gods are to have any hope of prevailing in Ragnarök — if Freyr is to have any chance of escaping the Norns’ prophecy and sharing a life with Lia in the days after — Lia must wait. Even the dragons who have vowed to join the gods in that final battle won’t be enough to save all of their lives. As Will’s unusual intuition evolves into the ability to see distant people and places, he realizes what they must do and where they must go before they face Ragnarök. The group takes one last journey through the worlds below in a dangerous and daring attempt to destroy Freyr’s greatest enemy before this most evil of the giants can join his brethren in the war they soon will wage against the gods on earth’s surface. If Freyr and Lia can prevail in the tasks they must face, they may pave the way for the life they both want but have never let themselves believe might be possible.


Excerpt


“It is not yet your time, Ailia Leng,” they said in voices full of regret, their eyes focused on Lia. “If you partake of that fruit now, all will be lost.”


Lia spun to look at Freyr, tears forming in her eyes. The weight of the world again had been laid at her feet. She turned back to the Norns. “No,” she said, pleading with them. “I’ve done all that you asked of me. What more must I do before I can truly be with Freyr?”


“It is your love we come to protect,” they said as they shifted to look at Freyr before gazing again at Lia. “You have done all that you can to protect your world. The weaves have shifted and your people may yet survive in the battle that will rage in the days ahead. But they have not yet shifted enough to save the man you love.”


“What do you mean?” Lia demanded, holding Freyr’s hand and drawing him toward her, as if by instinct. “Is Freyr still destined to die in Ragnarök?”


“The weave that will bring his death still dominates above all others,” the woman in blue told her, sadness in her deep voice, as if even the waves of the sea grieved for Freyr’s destiny.


“But I can save him if I don’t eat the apple? That must be why you’re here. You only come when you can make a difference, and it matters.”


The women spoke as one again. “We know not if you will save him,” they told her. “The weaves that lead to the death of the god of love are strong and today, as you come to sup of this fruit, they grow stronger still. And because of you, those weaves now reveal a new threat, greater than any we ever have seen in any of the nine worlds.”


They paused, perhaps reading the weaves in their minds’ eye. “The weaves ebb and flow as do the seas, shifting with your choices,” they said at last. “You must eat the apple. This being already possesses unrivaled power and you alone may be capable of defeating it. But first you must save your beloved. If a time after Ragnarök will be, your choice now will determine whether Freyr shares those days with you.”


“Dangerous days lie ahead of us,” Freyr declared, angry at the weaves and their messengers. “She must eat the apple, to protect her as we enter this battle.”


“And lose you?” Lia demanded, turning to him with eyes spitting fire. “Do you believe I want to be part of this family—to live forever—if I can’t share it with you? Would you make that choice?” Her voice had softened with the last question, asking him to see and agree with what she already had decided to do.


“I would not,” Freyr told her, his sadness permeating every word. “I would sacrifice my life for the chance to save yours.”


“As I will for you.” She turned to the Norns, her gaze defiant and determined. “Is there a weave in which we both survive?”


“The path is narrow and it will be hard to find,” they told her. “You will need skill and luck to walk it. Yet do we see a path in which you both survive Ragnarök.”


“Then that is the path we will take,” Lia said, her voice certain. She turned again to Freyr. “We’re in this together, for life. We’ve come this far, done so much … survived so much. We can do this too. It’s the only way.” She wanted Freyr to join her in this decision, even if he wanted nothing more right now than for her to eat the apple and finally gain the protection it would bring.


Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)


Book I is free November 14-18 and I’ll be discounting Books II-IV to $.99 for the week to celebrate the release of Heavy Heart.





The prequel, Fickle Fate, is available to anyone who signs up for my newsletter at https://rochellewilcox.com. Fifty years before Freyr met Lia, launching The Road to Ragnarök, the Norse Goddess of love Freyja met Will. Before him, she had fallen in love only once in the millennia she has walked the earth. But if she tells her family’s secret to Will, the man who somehow captured her heart, her family will never forgive her. It will start a war she may not win.



Author Biography


Rochelle Wilcox was born and raised in Las Vegas, where she learned at an early age the value of fantasy and escape. Raised by a single mom — one of the first women trained to deal poker in the early 70's — Rochelle spent more time in casinos than most adults. She and her husband decided to leave the desert behind and raise their sons in Northern California, where they spend as much time on the water as they can.


Despite her lifelong passion for story-telling, Rochelle's path took her to law school and then to a practice focused on media law and appeals. But her love of writing wasn't sated with briefs bound by legal principles and a fealty to facts. And so she set to paper the story that had been playing in her mind for years, based on the Norse mythology she loved as a child and built around her favorite character — the Norse God of Love, Freyr.


Rochelle has been working for 13 years on her four-part series, The Road to Ragnarök. As this epic tale unfolds, Freyr will learn that Lia’s love and her unexpected powers will be the key to the fate of the Norse gods in the battles they’ll face in Ragnarök, and that his very survival will depend on her.


Rochelle plans to retire from practicing law at the end of the year and focus full time on writing. The next series, tentatively titled Tales of the Vanir, will pick up where The Road to Ragnarök leaves off.


Social Media Links


Tags:

bottom of page