Nightweaver

Genres: YA Dark Fantasy; Sword & Sorcery; YA Romance

Synopsis

From Book 0:

Preorder now and receive the gorgeous DELUXE LIMITED EDITION while supplies last―featuring stenciled sprayed edges, as well as exclusive special design features. This must-have special edition is only available on a limited first print run while supplies last.

Dive into Starchaser, the thrilling, romantic, and action-packed sequel to the propulsive Nightweaver that’s perfect for fans of Powerless and Heartless Hunter.

Seventeen-year-old pirate Aster Oberon faces a stunning new reality, gifted with a magical ability that she’s struggling to master. Worse, both she and Will—the Nightweaver who has captured her heart—have been cursed. In mere weeks, they will become ferocious Underlings, creatures forced to serve the evil Morana. The only way to break the curse is by procuring Morana’s blood.

To track down the cure, Aster teams up with both Will and Titus, the infuriatingly handsome prince of the Eerie who secretly aims to overthrow his royal family’s tyrannical reign. The trio’s journey takes them to Castle Grim, where danger is around every corner, and no one is who they seem. Between deadly dinners, extravagant balls, and shifting desires toward Will and Titus, Aster will have to keep her blades at the ready and determine who she can rely on before the ticking clock of her curse runs out. 

This ultra-romantic, ultra-exciting follow up to Nightweaver is filled to the brim with mind-bending twists, swoon-worthy moments, and more adventure than a pirate could have ever expected.

Release date: March 4, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 432

Sample

I’m not fast enough.

When the alarm rings out, warning of the attack, Owen is already armed and racing up the companionway of our family’s ship.

“Don’t worry, little mouse.” My brother casts a wry smile over his shoulder as he tucks the knave of clubs playing card—his lucky card, as he calls it—up his sleeve, dirty-blond hair tumbling into his tawny eyes. “I’m sure there’ll still be something for you to do.”

I groan, stuffing daggers and pistols into every holster and sheath strapped to my body.

“Greedy pirate!” I call after him, a smirk tugging at my lips. Owen, the eldest of my six siblings and me, always claims the glory of first victory in battle and the best loot. But I never complain, and neither do my brothers and sisters, because there is no one I trust more to protect what our parents have fought so hard to secure—a home aboard the finest vessel a pirate could hope for, crewed by the nine of us, free to sail the Western Sea, and safe from the monsters that live on land.

I take a quick inventory of my weapons, checking each one off as I touch their hilts and handles. A knife in each boot, a dagger at either hip, four pistols at my back… satisfied with my walking armory, I take my cutlass in hand and chase after Owen.

Before I reach the top step, thick black smoke chokes the morning air. I emerge onto the main deck of the Lightbringer expecting a bloodbath, but this is worse.

Much worse.

My foot slips, and my back slams against the deck, knocking the breath from my lungs. The thunder of cannons trembles in my chest, a deafening crash of splintering wood. I try to gather my bearings, but something hot and sticky soaks my clothes; it drips from my tangled hair, filling my senses with the bitter, metallic bite of copper. To my left, the pool of crimson originates from a headless body.

I don’t need to see the face to know whose blood saturates me from head to toe.

Mary Cross, a refugee we took aboard only last week, after an enemy clan of pirates attacked her family’s ship. They slaughtered the Cross clan, leaving Mary adrift in the Dire, a dark stretch of ocean plagued by sea monsters and cutthroat pirates. It seems she escaped one battle only to meet her family’s same fate not a week later.

“On your feet!” Owen hoists me upright. He shouts something else, but I don’t hear him over the din of clashing metal.

I know of only one ship capable of creating such mayhem. In the two months I was held captive aboard the Deathwail, chained in the dank, dark hull of the cannibals’ ship, I listened as they attacked countless vessels, stealing pirate children from their parents in the dead of night. A year has passed since I was rescued, but I still feel the burn of the rope those bloodthirsty brutes tied around my neck. I still remember the word they used to justify their fear of an emaciated, unarmed sixteen-year-old.

Cursed.

“Who—”

As the word leaves my mouth, a blaze of fire illuminates the towering black sails of the ship at our starboard side, and I have my answer. This is not the work of the Deathwail. Not the work of a rival clan. A black flag, embroidered with the scarlet sun of the Eerie, billows in the wind.

Nightweavers.

I look back toward Owen, hoping to find some inkling of reassurance in his face—in his kind, tawny eyes, so much like our father’s, or his cheeky, carefree grin, a mirror image of our mother’s—but I’m met with an expression of fear I’ve never seen before. Not in him.

He grabs my shoulders, clutching me with urgency. “Whatever you do, don’t let them take you.” And with that, he’s gone, another faceless figure in the darkness.

My fist tightens around the hilt of my cutlass. I will not let them take me.

But I do not fear for myself. This is not my first battle. I have tasted blood and ash. I have plunged my dagger into the heart of my enemy. I have ended a life with the weight of a bullet. Elsie—sweet, innocent Elsie—has never had to endure the sting of a knife. For eight years, Mother and Father have been careful to shield my little sister from the horrors of the life my siblings and I lead. She has never witnessed a massacre such as this.

Today will be no different.

My feet pivot, and instead of diving headfirst into the fray, I start belowdecks. But as I turn, two figures block my only path to the companionway.

“Not so fast, pirate,” comes a rough voice as one of the men takes a step toward me, his iron blade held between us. Humans, I realize when I see their hard faces. But why would these humans choose to crew alongside Nightweavers?

No matter. No one stands between my sister and me.

I flourish my cutlass. “You say pirate like it’s an insult.”

The first man lunges, and I dodge his strike with ease. I twirl, bringing my blade down in a smooth arc, slicing his chest wide open. He falls to his knees, blood spraying onto his face. The sight of it spurs something in me—something I’ve felt before in the heat of battle: a sort of thrumming in my chest, like the rhythm of waves as they lap at the hull of a ship. Before the second man can find his footing, I use the momentum I gained to pierce his throat. I withdraw my blade with a wet shlink, and he falls to the deck beside his companion.

Too easy.

I step over their bodies, my boot sticking to the first bloodied tread of the passage that leads belowdecks. That’s when I hear her.

“Aster!” Elsie shrieks, calling for me. I spin on my heel, trying to make sense of my surroundings in the haze of smoke. Fire razes the mainmast of the Lightbringer—my first and only home for seventeen years. Our enemy’s reckless attack is a declaration—the Nightweavers don’t plan on looting our meager stores; we are the only cargo they’re interested in.

I sense movement to my right and lash out, my sword clashing with that of my sister Margaret. It’s like looking in a mirror. She’s two years older than me, but with the same wild, untamed hair that falls to her waist in dark brown waves, crisp with blood. Tears limn her sapphire eyes as she grits her teeth, lowering her sword.

“They took Elsie,” she cries over the roar of fire, her voice breaking. “Charlie tried to get her back, but—”

“Margaret!” Our most elusive brother, Lewis, appears at her side, half of his face bloodied from a gash in his head. As the ship’s resident spymaster, he always manages to keep his cool in battle. But he’s still just an eighteen-year-old boy, and though it hardly ever shows, he looks every bit his age as he pants for breath, his light brown eyes wide. “Albert’s wounded. His leg—”

Another blast sends shards of wood flying past us, slicing my face and arms. Margaret appears torn between tending to Albert and addressing my fresh wounds. But Albert is only eleven. He shouldn’t even be in this fight.

“Go!” I shout through the pain.

Margaret hesitates only a second longer before she and Lewis charge into a plume of smoke. Alone again, I sip at the air, attempting to slow my heartbeat and focus on the task at hand.

“Aster!” Elsie cries—closer now as I near the starboard railing.

Before I can determine a course of action, Owen emerges from the smoke. Once again he’s faster, grabbing hold of a line and leaping across the gap between our ship and the Nightweavers’. Without thinking, I follow him, careful not to glance at the dark waters below. My knees collide with the deck of the Nightweavers’ ship, but I’m on my feet in seconds, my spine flush against Owen’s.

“Damn it,” he snarls, and I’m surprised I hear him over the roar of the cannon as it rips another hole in the Lightbringer.

He must have heard her, too—little Elsie, in the arms of a Nightweaver, crying out for help. But she’s nowhere to be seen. And we’re surrounded.

Six Nightweavers encircle us, wielding rapiers that appear darker than any metal I’ve ever seen, the black iron glimmering with iridescent shades of purple, green, and blue. Their black cloaks are not suited for a life at sea, and their disfigured faces are hidden beneath the shadows of their hoods, but I’ve heard enough stories to know what I’m missing. Sallow skin, sharp teeth, eyes that shift between oily black pits and glowing red beacons. The stuff of old wives’ tales, meant to scare children into behaving. Only, myths and legends won’t tear your flesh from your bones in one bite. Nightweavers will.

There is a reason humans fled to the water six hundred years ago. After the Fall, Nightweavers claimed the land for themselves, hunting our kind to near extinction. The ocean was supposed to keep us safe. They weren’t supposed to follow us here. But as trade flourishes between Hellion, a kingdom along the coast of Dread in the west, and the Tamed Lands to the east, more Nightweaver ships are being spotted near the borders of the Dire. They’re hunting us again. And this time, we have nowhere left to run.

I swallow hard, stealing a glance toward our ship. Are Mother and Father still alive? Did they hear Elsie’s cry?

My pulse hammers in my throat. Behind me, Owen’s shoulders tense. How many times have we stood back-to-back, facing down our enemy, and laughed? Why isn’t he laughing?

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, his elbow brushing mine. I know what he really means. When we lose—and we will—he will not let the Nightweavers take me.

He’ll kill me before they get the chance.

If we were facing an enemy clan, his promise would give me peace. A quick death at the hand of my brother is a kindness. But my stomach sours at the thought of Elsie. If the rest of us die in battle, what will become of her?

With my empty hand, I clutch the medallion hanging from my neck, my thumb grazing the embossed skull and crossed daggers on the surface of the bronze coin. I stole it off the pirate who saved me from the Deathwail, if only to prove I didn’t imagine him in my feverish state. Some nights, when I wake in a fit of terror, I clutch the medallion to remind myself the nightmare is over. Now, as my fingers trace the symbol of death, the words he spoke to me as I slipped in and out of consciousness brush up against my mind. Now’s not the time for dying, love, he said. Remember, you have to live.

Dying is easy. To save Elsie—to save my family—I’ll have to live. Because if I’m not there to protect her from whatever gruesome fate the Nightweavers have planned for her, who will?

“What about the Red Island?” I say, nudging Owen, my eyes narrowed on the Nightweavers as they tighten their ranks to close the distance between us. “You said we’d find it together.”

Owen rolls his head on his neck, sighing. “I thought you gave up on it.”

I shift my weight and assume an offensive stance. “You know me better than that.”

Many pirates have told tales of the mysterious Red Island, a haven for seafaring humans hidden deep within the Dire, where few ever dare to venture. For years, Owen has implored Mother and Father to search for the Red Island. Still, they refuse. It’s only a legend, they tell him. But he doesn’t believe that. And neither do I.

I hear a smile in his voice when he says, “We go together, then.”

Owen lurches forward, and I lose myself in the dance. I keep light on my feet, locked in battle with two Nightweavers, dodging their blows with ease. Their heavy cloaks offer me an advantage; the Nightweavers are slow, their steps unsure as the waves toss us to and fro.

I grit my teeth as the clang of metal on metal vibrates my jaw. They might not be accustomed to fighting aboard a ship, but I’m no match for a Nightweaver—much less two. They don’t tire like us, and I summon every ounce of my strength to match them strike for strike.

“Aster!” Elsie wails.

I lose focus for only a second, but that’s all it takes. In the instant I turn my head, searching for Elsie in the haze, the Nightweaver nearest to me lunges, his rapier aimed at my heart.

I’m not fast enough.

But Owen is.

He parries, throwing himself in front of me with enough force to knock me backward. I stumble, landing on a heap of bodies. He bested four Nightweavers, and I couldn’t handle even two. If we live, he’ll never let me forget it.

I barely find my footing when I’m yanked into the air. Two large hands wrap around my throat. Black spots edge my vision, and my cutlass clatters to the deck. A strangled yelp escapes me, though I wish it didn’t.

This time, it’s Owen who turns.

His eyes—his kind eyes—find me in an instant. They widen as a deep red stain blooms on his chest.

A Nightweaver withdraws his blade, slick with blood, and Owen’s body crumples forward.

I want to scream, but the hands around my throat tighten. Owen’s body blurs through my tears, but I can’t look away from him. My oldest brother—my best friend—is dead. And it’s all my fault.

Kill me, I plead silently, praying for death. But even as I think the words, shame claws viciously at my chest. No. Elsie needs me. My family needs me. I have to keep fighting. I have to live.

I struggle and kick, but the pressure builds in my head, bulging behind my eyes. Just as the world goes dark, I’m sent sprawling onto the deck. I reach for Owen’s sleeve, clawing at the rough linen like I can rouse him from no more than a deep sleep.

“Get up!” I shout. “We go together! We have to go together!”

“Leave him!” barks a hoarse voice.

When I look up, I find Mother has followed us onto the Nightweavers’ ship. She stands over my attacker’s body, her face red with blood, her dark, untamed waves cascading down her yellow brocade coat. A crimson fountain gushes from the Nightweaver’s throat, spilling onto her feet, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She fixes her intense gaze on the two Nightweavers now backing away from where Owen and I lie.

“Get back to the Lightbringer!” she croaks, her face streaked where tears have cut through the smattering of scarlet. “Find Father—get to the jolly boat. Now!”

I know better than to disobey her, but that doesn’t stop me. Elsie is still on this ship, and I will not let another sibling’s blood stain my hands. Not while I have breath in my lungs and enough bullets to take down anyone who stands in my way. I press a kiss to Owen’s head and lift his arm, slipping the leather bracelet from his wrist onto mine.

I draw a pistol from my back, and while Mother is distracted with the two Nightweavers, I start for the companionway. When I reach the first step, I pivot slightly, my finger resting on the trigger. He’s in my line of sight—Owen’s murderer—but I freeze. The Nightweaver has his back to me, engaged in a duel with Mother—but there’s something else, too.

A dark, shadowy figure seeps from the Nightweaver’s body, taking on a form of its own. It looms over him, facing me, with scarlet eyes and teeth like daggers. It lets out a bloodcurdling shriek as it darts past me and disappears through the double doors of the captain’s quarters.

The Nightweaver drops, convulsing at Mother’s feet. His companion stumbles back in horror, and in that moment, I think he might actually seem human. They feel fear, too. Good to know.

Mother uses the opportunity to cut down his companion, and when he falls, she drives her blade through the other’s chest, putting him out of his misery. I catch her eye, and she dips her chin at me, as if she forgot she ordered me to retreat, or doesn’t care.

“I’ll find Elsie,” she says, closing the space between us in a few strides. She places a hand on my shoulder, and the surrounding chaos seems to slow, if just for a moment, as her eyes linger on Owen’s body. “All is well.”

All is well—the customary response to death in battle. The words are meant to be both a comfort and a call to arms, but they’ve never felt so hollow.

Mother heads belowdecks, trusting that this time I’ll obey and return to the ship, but I don’t move. I stare at the double doors, my pistol heavy in my hand. Mother and Father always taught us to ration our bullets, but somehow I think this may be the last chance I’ll ever get to use them. And whatever’s waiting for me inside the captain’s quarters won’t go down without a fight.

I reach the double doors, hesitate. The Lightbringer has gone up in flames. It will sink before dawn breaks, and my home will rest forever beneath the waves.

I have nothing left to lose.

I draw a second pistol from the strap across my back and kick the doors wide open. The neat, elegant chambers offer a reprieve from the wreckage outside. But the quiet puts me on edge. That shadow creature is somewhere, hiding, waiting to catch me unaware.

I won’t let it.

Wood creaks underfoot as I take measured steps toward the door to the captain’s private head. Something stirs behind it, and I think I hear breathing.

Owen’s actual killer is on the other side of this door. That shadow creature possessed the Nightweaver that ran my brother through—I can feel it. It wanted me to know; it wanted me to follow. And if I die avenging Owen, then so be it. I never thought I’d live this long, anyway.

I kick open the door, my pistols drawn, but it isn’t a looming shadow I find huddled on the floor. A little girl looks up at me, her long black hair spiraling in ringlets, her green eyes glassy with tears. She can’t be much older than Elsie. What is she doing on a Nightweaver ship?

I lower my pistols. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I whisper. But before I can hold out my hand to help her to her feet, I’m struck from behind, and my knees buckle. I fight for consciousness, but it’s no use.

The last thing I see is the black cloak of a Nightweaver as he hovers over me, pushing back his hood. But it isn’t the face of a monster hidden beneath.

It’s the face of a boy.

I kneel beside Owen, face down in a pool of his own blood. With great effort, I turn him over, praying to the Stars that I will see his kind eyes looking up at me. But his empty eyes are no longer kind. Shadows seep from two cavernous black pits, and his mouth twists, an inhuman smirk altering his familiar features. He lurches forward, and his hands clasp my throat.

I wake with a start, my threadbare tunic drenched with sweat. For a brief moment, I expect to see Mother, come to rescue me from the terror of sleep. Instead, my bleary eyes are met with soft beams of undulating moonlight. The sea rocks me gently, a comforting rhythm as familiar as my own heartbeat. Sea—not land. But this is not the Lightbringer.

Heavy scarlet furs blanket me, staving off the chill, and when I attempt to reach for the medallion at my neck, coarse ropes tighten around my wrists. Through the haze, I glimpse the boy in the Nightweaver cloak peering down at me from my bedside. Tangled black curls dust his severe jaw, and silver light dapples his pale hands as he gently touches my shoulder. A wave of calm ripples through my body, urging me to sleep.

My eyes close, and I see him again—Owen, shrouded by the mist. Only, this time he stands in front of me, flanked by a host of looming shadows with razor-sharp teeth, his dark eyes like deep wells of ink. The liquid black of his eyes drips onto his cheeks, as if he were crying.

You should have killed me, he shrieks in a voice I don’t recognize, that same inhuman smirk twisting his face.

I’m sorry, I want to cry, but my lips are pressed tight, barricading my sobs. As if incited by my despair, the shadows descend upon his flesh, teeth bared, red eyes gleaming. His arm rips, gushing blood. Then his leg. His scream is so far from human I could pretend it isn’t Owen bleeding out on the deck before me. But when he begs for mercy, he sounds like himself again—my brother, my best friend, the boy who once laughed in the face of his enemies. I want to go to him, but I can’t move. I can’t even look away.

When his cries can no longer be heard over the sickening snap of bone and he is fully obscured by the throng of shadows, they turn on me. Teeth pierce my left shoulder, and my eyelids fling themselves wide.

The furs are gone, my tunic dry. I’m propped against a barrel on the main deck, the rattle of chains thrumming in my chest. I blink away sleep and squint in the afternoon light. Silhouetted against the graying sky, bordered by Nightweavers in their black cloaks, the prisoners stand straight-backed despite their chains. My pulse hammers as I count the prisoners, their weary, baffled expressions mirroring my own. Mother, Father, Charlie, Margaret, Lewis… the knot in my chest loosens when I spot her: Elsie, the stray strands of pale blond hair from her pigtail braids sticking to her cheeks. Her face is wet with tears, but her chin is held high. Beside Elsie, Albert leans on our little sister’s shoulder, his right leg bent at an odd angle.

An ache creeps into my throat. Owen’s absence is palpable, weighing on my shoulders, threatening to crush me flat. He should be here. He should be alive.

My stomach sinks. A single band of braided leather marks each of my siblings’ arms, a unifying trait. But my wrists are bare but for the fetters, clamped tight, cutting off circulation. Owen’s bracelet is gone, along with my own.

I attempt to wriggle my torpefied fingers as I glare at the assembly of Nightweavers. Which one of these monsters took my bracelets? Which one will pay for it with their life?

The Nightweaver nearest to Elsie draws back her hood, and brassy hair tumbles over her shoulders. She shouts something inaudible over the howl of the wind, and the Nightweaver at Margaret’s right throws back his head, laughing. His hood falls, revealing a shock of red hair. They’re not monsters. They’re just… people.

I struggle to find any physical differences between the Nightweavers and us humans, but there’s nothing to be found aside from the Nightweavers’ obvious wealth and elevated status aboard the ship. Even the finery of their black cloaks is subtle but unmistakable, hints of gold or silver thread all that set the Nightweavers apart from the few human members of their crew. Humans who, I now realize, look unnaturally dirty compared to the Nightweavers, as if they’d been denied the right to proper hygiene in order to make their lesser status even more distinct.

Fresh panic courses through my veins. How will I know when I am facing my enemy if my enemy looks just like me?

Before I can form another coherent thought, I’m yanked to my feet. The fetters around my ankles cause me to stumble, but a second hand grabs me as I fall, and then I’m being dragged.

“Hurry now,” shouts the brassy-haired Nightweaver. “The hearing is scheduled to begin just after the execution. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see that traitor hang and earn a bit of coin from this lot.”

My eyes meet Mother’s. She watches me, a warning flashing in her sapphire gaze. One look at her lined face and I know not to fight back. There is a time to fight, and there is a time to survive, she always says. The time for fighting has come and gone. Despite my family’s pride, we are unarmed and unmatched, surrounded by Nightweavers.… And what we lack in coin and class, we make up for with common sense. If there has ever been a time for the Oberon clan to survive, it’s now.

My gaze drifts to my feet as I’m carried over the bloodstained deck where Owen’s lifeless body fell. His screech echoes in my mind: You should have killed me. Is it possible he could have survived the blade through his heart?

No—I saw him. He was dead. Besides, it doesn’t matter now. They threw his body overboard with all the rest.

I glare at the place where he drew his final breath, squinting to see a piece of white paper caught between the wooden boards, the tiny black design like a smudge of soot on the corner of the card. There, peeking out from the slats in the deck—Owen’s lucky card, the knave of clubs. It must have dropped from his sleeve during the attack.

I start forward as if to retrieve the card, but before I can, a raven with wings the color of midnight swoops down, grasping Owen’s lucky card with its beak. The raven cocks its head, its black eyes staring straight through me, before flying away, the card in its possession.

I don’t have a moment to be stunned or sad or even curious about the raven as I’m shoved into the line, between Charlie and Father. I glance over my shoulder at Father, who bows his head slightly in greeting—ever the calm, collected sailor. Unlike Owen, Father keeps his dirty-blond hair shaved close to his head, but his short, scruffy beard has filled in since I saw him last. His eyes are bloodshot but just as warm and kind as they always are—a small comfort.

“Death is the only defeat,” Father whispers, so quietly I almost think I imagined it. The Nightweavers don’t see his lips move—a trick he’s tried to teach me many times but one I’ve never mastered.

“And an Oberon is never defeated,” I recite back, my voice low. The fetters bite into my skin, drawing blood. This certainly feels like defeat.

Still, I have to believe him, not for my own sake, but for that of my family. For little, curious Elsie and tenderhearted Albert. For clever Margaret and caring, considerate Charlie. For Lewis with his eccentric flair for mischief and danger. For Mother and Father, who’ve given us all they can and love us more than we deserve. For Owen.

He was defeated.

We will not be.

“Where were you?” Charlie whispers, glancing over his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” I say quickly, ignoring the searing white-hot pain that envelopes my wrists. “And I don’t know—a room, I think?”

“He kept you from us for two weeks, Az.” His low voice sounds more like a growl. Charlie, the tallest in our family—six feet, three inches of brawny muscle and a temper to match—towers over our Nightweaver captors like a mountain. His dark brown hair, shaved close on the sides, is tied into a bun at the back of his head, exposing the tattoo of an eight-point star at the base of his neck. “Albert’s been a wreck.”

I squint against the dull gray light, peeking around Charlie to catch a glimpse of my little brother. Albert tied his light blond hair into a bun to match Charlie’s a few years ago, and he takes it down only to allow Mother to brush out the tangles. I notice Albert glancing at our older brother, attempting to mimic Charlie’s intimidating posture despite being nine years younger and a third his size.

“Two weeks?” I have vague memories of waking once, but… two weeks? How could I have slept for two weeks? And why keep me separated from my family? “Where were the rest of you?”

Charlie waits until the redheaded boy has passed before answering, his lip curled in a semipermanent snarl. “They threw us in the cleanest brig I’ve ever laid eyes on. Gave us bread and water.” He shrugs a shoulder. “I’ve been locked in worse cells.”

The ship moans as we scrape the docks. I’ve seen land before—smugglers’ ports all along the Cutthroat Coast of the Tamed Lands in the east, secret trade posts where pirate clans from throughout the Western Sea come to stretch their legs and exchange stolen goods. But I’ve never left the Lightbringer. The water is my home, my sanctuary, my protector. Now, as we march down the gangplank, it’s as if the ocean lashes at the Nightweavers’ ship, petitioning for my freedom.

I look back, determined to remember the name of this ship so that one day I may hunt down its crew and make them answer for what they did. My eyes narrow on the bow of the vessel, where MERRYWAY is painted in gold lettering. In the past, we sank battleships with names like Stormraider and Soulcleaver. Now an acrid taste burns the back of my throat at the thought of the Lightbringer meeting her end at the behest of a brig called the Merryway. But the name of the ship that took my family prisoner is the least of my worries.

I cling to the presence of the water for as long as I can, savoring my last moments in its embrace. I might never taste this salt-laden air again—might never feel the mist on my skin, nor the gentle sway of the waves, a safe, rocking cradle. The instant my boot sinks into the marshy shore, everything within me begs to turn around. I’m forced forward another shaky step, then another, until the towering black pines along the coast part to form a large clearing and the wailing of the waves is no more than a whisper.

I will return. I swallow around the lump rising in my throat. I will not let them take me.

I stumble and sway as I crane my neck to look at the trees, each one taller than the masts of the Lightbringer. The earth is solid beneath my feet, the scuffle of gritty, wet dirt unlike the familiar creak of wood. Tufts of damp green grass sprout from the ground in indiscriminate clumps, alive in a way I’ve never seen up close. The farther inland we travel, the air turns oppressively humid, the scent almost sweet. With the shift in the atmosphere, I feel at once as if I’ve entered a new world—a peculiar one composed of strange sounds, foreign textures, and vibrant colors that compete for my attention, stark and overwhelming.

I think of Owen as we’re paraded through the muddy streets, attempting to focus my mind. He used to tell me stories about the Nightweavers and the humans they sometimes keep as pets. They’re just like us, he’d say of the latter, but the Nightweavers have them under some kind of spell. I’d huddle between Lewis and Margaret, listening as Owen and Charlie spun tales of the time before the Nightweavers, when humans ruled