Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe In a future where language magic reigns, a young Hawaiian woman must solve a murder to clear her name. By Shay Kauwe | Published on April 2, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe, a new fantasy novel publishing with Saga Press on April 14th. Kea Petrova is dealing with more than her fair share of trouble.At just twenty-five years old, she’s the youngest of five Hawaiian clan leaders living on the Homestead in outer Los Angeles. Nearly 200 years ago, when a catastrophic flood submerged the Hawaiian islands and unleashed magic into the world, these clans forged a treaty with the city, establishing a new Hawaiian homeland. But that treaty is about to expire.Kea struggles to keep her small clan afloat, scraping together rent each month through odd jobs and selling her own crafted Hawaiian language spells. While her talent for language magic is her saving grace, she feels like a shadow of those who came before her. Just when she thinks things can’t get any more complicated, the murder of Angelo Reyes—LA’s most prominent Filipino activist—turns her world upside-down.Angelo was killed by a death spell—something that, due to the properties of each school of language magic, can only exist in Hawaiian. With independent spellsmithing being technically illegal, Kea quickly becomes the prime suspect, known for her spellwork on the Homestead. To clear her name, she must unravel the mystery behind Angelo’s murder and confront LA’s most powerful (and dangerous) players, each wielding their own type of magic. The clock is ticking—can Kea save herself, her clan, and the Homestead before it’s too late? LA CITY ORDINANCE #11358 As decreed by the Los Angeles Board, all prospective Guild members of any vocation, including Caster and Smith, must pass a licensing examination in order to practice magic within city territory. The examination shall be administered in the chosen regulated language: Latin, French, Italian, or Spanish. Regulation shall be decided upon by the Board and reviewed every three years to include any language with a history of proven merit to be considered for advancement. A language may be considered three times for regulation before being permanently disqualified. * * * AMENDMENT 1: Arabic has passed its second attempt at regulation and been graded exceptional due to its profound influence on global literature. The language’s proclivity toward storytelling, narration, and documentation is deemed invaluable to the study of magic. One seat has been opened on the Board for a licensed Arabic speaker of a recognized clan. * * * AMENDMENT 2: Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese have passed their first attempt at regulation and been graded noteworthy due to their contributions to culture and art. Cantonese and Mandarin’s effects on good fortune and Japanese’s manipulation of the human body are deemed worthy of further study. Two seats have been opened on the Board for licensed Cantonese, Mandarin, or Japanese speakers of recognized clans. * * * Tagalog has failed its first attempt at regulation. No amendment will be made. Chapter 1 Kea, I need you. I flinched at the sound of the voice in my head. Makani’s sympathetic talent of telepathy, though benign, was always unsettling, like a pinch right at the temple. Closing my eyes, I focused on sending him a response. Your chores better be done if you’re goofing off. Something followed me into the coop. In a heartbeat, my irritation turned to ice-cold fear. I dropped the plastic basket of wet sheets I was holding and ran to the backyard, which overlooked the ocean. Our usually small house felt like a gigantic barrier as I sprinted across the dry grass toward the garden. The coop came into view, a ramshackle construction made of weathered wood, and one of our hens, Fiona, flopped out. She clucked disapprovingly at me; her leg twisted at a funny angle as she hobbled away. The chalk of the ward around the entrance had been wiped off by the door, leaving a smudge of grayish residue on the wooden planks. Clearly Makani’s handiwork. I swore under my breath. I’d told him a thousand times to stop pestering the birds. I’m scared. There was no time to be mad. I hadn’t been expecting a fight, so I was stuck only with a leiomano in my back pocket. While relatively strong for a woman of my height, I wasn’t that strong. If something big had gotten into the shed, I had little hope of success in beating it to death. I gently tapped the door with my left shoulder while pulling out the flattened oval club, holding it at an angle in front of me. The sheen of polished wood and sharp shark’s teeth looked intimidating, but it wasn’t a hunting weapon. In the shed, I wouldn’t have the space to move freely or build power into a good swing. I’d need to get it, whatever it was, out. The door cracked open a hair’s width, and I peered inside. A pair of hazel eyes stared back at me from my cousin jammed under the birds’ perch. Feathers, blood, and dead chickens lay everywhere. A low, guttural hiss emerged from the darkness, irritated by the thin stream of light I had let in. The air, speckled with dust and fluttering pieces of stray hay, was heavy and hot. Makani’s chest rose and fell with quiet, strangled breaths. He squeezed his eyes shut and shot me a message. It’s behind the door. Buy the Book The Killing Spell Shay Kauwe Buy Book The Killing Spell Shay Kauwe Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Not daring to startle the thing, I twisted my head to look at the spaces between the bolts and spied a patch of scales hidden in the shadows. Stretching from the frame of the door to the wall, the creature was too large to be any normal animal. It had to be a magi. The hissing stopped as the beast shuffled. I lost sight of it and became acutely aware of the blood rushing through my veins. Tensing my muscles, I leaned closer to the door, desperate to figure out what kind of magi it was. A black iris flashed in the empty space, narrowing in on me, and the hissing turned to a growl. I sent Makani back a single command. Move! He crawled from his hiding place just as the magi lunged for him. I slammed my shoulder into the door as hard as I could, sending the beast squealing as it was knocked against the back shelves. Makani screamed. He squirmed forward on his stomach to the side of the perch that was protected by a metal grate. The magi’s head swiveled to focus on his retreating figure. “Hey, ugly!” I shouted, stomping my feet to attract its attention. The beast snarled, stepping into the light from the open door. A mo‘o. About five feet long, the lizard creature had sharp teeth made for rending meat, and smooth scales covered its entire body in a sickly Granny-Smith green that faded to pale white around its lower belly. Just a baby one. I could take care of it. Figuring my forearm would hurt less, I dragged the sharpest tooth of the leiomano down the front of my arm, wincing as I pressed in deeper to scratch up the skin. A trickle of blood welled to the surface and dripped down in a thin line. The mo‘o raised its head so that its bulging, white neck flared like a balloon. It sniffed the air. Once its beady black eyes found the source of blood, it stilled and turned its undivided attention onto me. Good boy. Magi might be born from magic, but ultimately, they were just animals. They couldn’t reason or use logic the way a person could. No talking dragons, or singing unicorns, or any of those other stupid stories you read about in fantasy books from before the Flood. Magi were dangerous but dumb. I turned my back to it and ran. Feral instinct took over as the magi smelled blood on my retreating figure. Prey. Hunt. Food. It rushed after me. Running down the hill toward the beach wouldn’t work as my blood would likely attract more creepy-crawlies from the water, so the front of our property was the best bet. My bare feet slammed against the dry grass as I lured it to the front lawn, but I wasn’t fast enough. The mo‘o was on my heels. My palms got sweaty around the wooden handle of the leiomano, and I swore to arm myself better next time I did the laundry. Waving my arms wildly to keep the mo‘o from ascending the back stairs onto the porch, I ran parallel to the rickety frame of our house. As I rounded the corner, I banged on the walls to make noise, releasing a shower of chipped dry paint in my wake. Sun-bleached flakes rained down around me, filling the air with the dissipating scent of sour milk. It worked. The mo‘o slithered in my direction with its mouth wide open, ready to chomp down as we made it to the front lawn. If it sunk its teeth into me, I’d get a nasty cut. But we didn’t have any money lying around for stitches, so I wasn’t looking to take chances. I’d have to cast something. My jaw locked as I planted my feet and pivoted to face the mo‘o. Breathing deeply, I ran through a list of words I could use that could make this damn thing stop moving. Russian could work. It was simple and effective when there was an obvious target and I didn’t need to bother with definite articles, but I needed a word that rhymed with begat. Maybe run was the wrong idea though. Did lizards really run? At eight feet away, it certainly felt like it. Scratch Russian. I didn’t have time to figure out a rhyme to make the spell work. My other trusty language, English, was always a no-go on the fly. Any attempt on my end to be poetical fell flat no matter how many Shakespearean arts, thous, or foes I threw in, even though it was an established fact that a good sonnet would work wonders. Emphasis there on good. Hawaiian it had to be. Six feet away now, the mo‘o crawled closer, a furious pace infecting its approach. Five feet. Hawaiian was so vague though. A simple stop might work, but it also might stop all the internal organs in both my body and the mo‘o’s from functioning. Only four feet left. Three. There was no time. Keeping eye contact with the beast, I crouched low and dug my fingers into the lawn, entwining brittle blades of grass in my grip. With my other hand I dropped the leiomano flat to the ground and pressed hard on top of it for balance. The mo‘o was nearly right in front of me, its breath warming the air so close that I could feel the heat on my nose. Reaching for the mana from my core, I said the first word that came to mind. “E ho‘opa‘a.” Stick. Magic surged out of my hands and into the ground around us, rising up like a sudden breeze from the dirt. The lizard stopped moving. It writhed, tossing itself back and forth, but its efforts to escape were futile. My spell kept its legs glued firmly to the earth around it. I breathed out a sigh of relief. One-word spells weren’t supposed to work, but they always had for me. Sort of. They had an effect, that was enough. Call it a quirk of my mana, an unexpected benefit to being absolute crap at all other kinds of magic. I tried to lift my left hand off the leiomano so that I could finish the job and found that my spell had worked a little too well. I was also firmly stuck to the ground. Dammit. I really should have stopped using one-word castings years ago, but when in a pinch, I had a bad habit of saying whatever popped into my head. The joke was on me, though, since they rarely worked how I wanted them to. The mo‘o spat at me, struggling against my magic’s hold as I strained my neck toward the house. “Sisi!” I could hear the TV blaring inside. Giving it a minute, I baked in the afternoon heat, three feet away from a floundering giant lizard. “Sicilia!” I yelled again, louder. The screen door on our porch swung open and Sisi, my teenage sister, appeared. Her hands were on her hips, and there was an irritated crease carved through the sun-freckled skin of her forehead. With Sicilia’s light-brown waves and emerald-green eyes, people usually did a double take when I explained that we were related, though I never really understood why. She and I looked a lot alike. We both had deep-set, almond eyes that turned down slightly at the ends, wide, flat noses, and full lips. Our features were nearly identical, but we were different in our coloring. While Sisi was fair, I had brown everything. Brown skin, brown hair, and dark-brown eyes that could only be described as penetrating. Sicilia was chewing a piece of bubble gum, apparently oblivious to the spitting mo‘o on our lawn. “A little help?” I asked. The gum snapped in her mouth, and she shot a disdainful glance at the magi. “What am I supposed to do about that?” “Kill it,” I explained through gritted teeth, trying not to let my irritation bubble out. Sisi’s gaze fell on the weapon below my left hand. “You do it.” “I can’t,” I stressed. Sicilia’s hair was wound into a lazy topknot that spilled precariously to the side. The tita bun was a nice complement to her attitude. “Doesn’t look like that to me.” I didn’t have the patience for this. “I’d love to take care of this myself, but I cast something and if I release the smithing, I’ll end up unsticking the mo‘o too. I’d be right back where I started.” To emphasize how bad that would be, the mo‘o made a snarling noise and gnashed its teeth together, trying to lunge forward. Its feet didn’t budge, but the beast did spit some of its saliva onto my cheek, making me recoil. Unfortunately, my spell held tight, and the only thing I could manage to do was jerk my head back a few inches. Gross. My magic had a track record of fighting against every good intention I threw at it. At ten, I’d tried a common Latin spell to find my grandmother’s lost keys and ended up with every pin, screw, and nail in the house flying at my face. I quickly learned that the only way to tame my magic into doing what I wanted was by using spells I’d smithed myself, but that took time, patience, and talent. Sadly, I was in short supply of all three. Sicilia gave an exaggerated sigh. “Let me get my crossbow. I’m not getting lizard guts all over my favorite shorts.” The screen door slammed shut and I was left alone. Excerpted from The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press at Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Killing Spell</i> by Shay Kauwe appeared first on Reactor.