Hello guys, I need beta readers for my books/people to yell at me for slacking off. I've gone through two full editing runs of this draft, but I can't leave well enough alone, so I've been working on ANOTHER pass. The main character is Ivian, who I know some of you guys are interested in. Here are the first two paragraphs:

The Lord of the Lances had eyes dark as heather honey and just as bold, though Ivian recalled how his authority had faltered the moment their hands met. No mask of poise could withstand the intensity of the fire that surged between them. They had lingered too long, both struggling to make sense of what they had just experienced. Then the lord was hurried along by a retainer, and after a brief backwards glance, he was gone. That was ten years ago, and not a day went by that Ivian didn’t think back to when he’d seen that rarest of beasts: vulnerability on the face of Sir Oberlan Isentide.

The years hadn’t been kind to Ivian. He spent them in a garrison on the Northern Bulwark, the bottleneck separating civility from savagery. His left cheek was marred by a scar left by a poisoned sylvan blade, doomed never to fully heal, which warped his smile into a facsimile of mirth. The forest left its mark in other ways, too—on body and heart, on mind and soul. The captain said he must have the blessing of the goddess to have survived so long, but deep down Ivian knew that what kept him alive was not so sacrosanct.

If this appeals to anyone, feel free to send me a message.