Blog Tour: Deceiving Their Minds by Laiken Rhodes

She was raised to be a lie. Now she’s rewriting the truth in blood. 




Deceiving Their Minds, an all-new Forced Proximity, Touch Her and Die, Secret Society Dark Romance romance from debut author Laiken Rhodes now available! 


Audrey 
When an invitation arrives inviting me to participate in the first Viperae Rosarum Ludi, I was reluctant to accept. My past was already dipped in tragedy, and fighting for a seat within the feared secret society holds no appeal to me. The promise of power and riches does nothing for me as a girl whose birthright holds the promise of crowns, yet I find myself entering the Ludi with the other Heirs of the Cove by my side. I quickly come to realize the forefathers holding the Ludi aim to break me, to carve me open and find what makes me tick. Little do they know that I am not the naive girl they believe me to be… And the Guilda Sanguinis Venenati just opened their doors to something much worse than the monsters they have lurking within. This “innocent little” princess lost her innocence long ago, and now I plan to seek vengeance on all those who thought to wrong me. 

The Shadow 
Princess Audrey Yates. My obsession. My prey. The target the Guild placed right in front of me again. The girl who should have run far, far away from me. 


Keep Reading for a look inside Deceiving Their Minds!

It all started with a secret.
Four friends stood on the edge of a cliff surrounding a rudimentary burial site, staring down at the secret—now dead—that their queen revealed. The now cooling body of a dear friend, a brother, had become quite the unfortunate scene below them.
An enemy.
A villain.
A betrayer.
A newly crowned Queen.
The Shadow stalked them from the nearby treeline, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. In silence, he watched as distrust and anger grew among the once united friends; a reckoning was coming. Karma, in its truest form, preyed on the queen who had decided to lie and omit truths to all of them.
Blanketed by the safety net of those woods, he observed the crumbling of the town’s unofficial royalty—the Sextum Secretum, Secret Six they had called themselves. A family forged through the difficulties of being heirs than born of blood. In the face of the final trial, the Viperae Rosarum Ludi had shattered the undisputed hierarchy into pieces until even the strongest of glue could no longer make them whole.
Lilah vonBermere had mysteriously disappeared earlier in the night, after lingering in the background silently, with a cruel smirk lining her face.
Ellery Remington was the quiet showman--always observing but never heard from unless you were fortunate enough to be included in his inner circle.
Lexington & Wentworth Kenton were the princes of the esteemed Kenton Estate and the sons of the town’s founding family. The brothers shared a secret “even darker than the events that had occurred on the Alabastor cliffs that night.
And lastly, Audrey Yates, the British orphan of the revered Ellsworth lineage and the unofficial Queen of Sir Edmund University. The heir with ties to an even more dangerous family line, now that she had accepted her true name.
The betrayer. The viper. The princess.
The queen who wore many titles.
The young, rebellious woman who had broken every law The Guilda Sanguis Venenati abided by. She was the reason for The Shadow's presence that evening.
Silently, The Shadow pondered if he should reveal himself or if he should just walk away and leave them to their own demise, now that the truths behind their Queen's lies had begun to leak through the cracks. The final bonds of their friendship slowly unravelled, turning the friends into untrusting allies against The Guilda, who had forced their hand in the trials that led up to tonight.
Even still, The Shadow watched gleefully as the smouldering ashes of a ruined friendship, a familial bond, and a first love quickly turned to dust.
Tortured and angry yells erupted on the cliff’s edge. Shaking his head, The Shadow retreated quietly, a grim chuckle filling the quiet stillness around him as a sneer slid onto his face. Plans for retribution were already forming in his mind as the “need for vengeance wrestled with his fraying need for control.
Deciding to leave the four to their ruin, The Shadow contemplated how he would seek his revenge while still portraying the face of the obedient little Umbra The Guilda believed they trained him to be.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. I’m coming, Princess…do what you must…
The culmination of The Viperae Rosarum Ludi’s second and final game tonight was supposed to be a celebration. But instead, it had become a night that lit a spark of insurmountable war within The Shadow. The betrayal of his princess, the crowned Queen herself, perfect little Audrey Yates, had lain on his soul and was unforgivable.
A fear that had trickled in when he had realised what her plan had been to circumvent her fate within the tribulations of the Ludi’s trials. Unbeknownst to his obsession, she had caught the eye of a monster even worse than the one she would become, a monster inexplicably darker than the man she had just allowed herself to love.
The forefathers of The Guilda around the world had always quietly feared what would happen when the infamous Umbra finally snapped. It was whispered in secret that The Shadow of The Guilda never forgot those who slighted him, that perhaps he would be even more ruthless than the Umbra who ​​preceded him. That every infraction, every lie would always be paid for in blood.
For shadows fear no one but burn brightest in the eyes of those who have nothing left to lose.
Let the games begin, Princess…the world’s deadliest Umbra is now hunting you.


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For more information about Laiken Rhodes and her books, visit her website: https://authorlaikenrhodes.com/ 


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