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Synopsis
In this thrilling and epic YA fantasy debut the only hope for a city trapped in the eye of a cursed storm lies with the daughter of failed revolutionaries and a prince terrified of his throne.
Vesper Vale is the daughter of revolutionaries. Failed revolutionaries. When her mother was caught by the queen’s soldiers, they gave her a choice: death by the hangman’s axe, or death by the Storm that surrounds the city and curses anyone it touches. She chose the Storm. And when the queen’s soldiers—led by a paranoid prince—catch up to Vesper’s father after twelve years on the run, Vesper will do whatever it takes to save him from sharing that fate.
Even arm herself with her father’s book of dangerous experimental magic.
Even infiltrate the prince’s elite squad of soldier-sorcerers.
Even cheat her way into his cold heart.
But when Vesper learns that there’s more to the story of her mother’s death, she’ll have to make a choice if she wants to save her city: trust the devious prince with her family’s secrets, or follow her mother’s footsteps into the Storm.
Release date: July 5, 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins
Print pages: 400
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The Darkening
Sunya Mara
If nightmares had music, they’d sound like the Storm.
Thunder like a racing heartbeat. Stinging jolts of lightning, a bombardment with neither rhythm nor mercy. And a slow, seething howl, like a beast denied its prey.
With fists of wind, the Storm bangs against the shutters, trying to crack our little house open like an egg. When it can’t, it slices through our walls, finding all sorts of ways to make wood scream.
Amma’s sweet, rasping voice comes from downstairs, joined by the mournful thrum of her sitar. A lullaby, one she used to sing while drying my tears. But there are some sounds that even the sweetest lullaby can’t drown out.
As if the Storm heard my thoughts, the shutters slam open, letting in a blast of humid air fragrant with ozone. My mouth fills with the telltale taste of spun sugar and copper.
I go to the window, bracing the shutters, and then I make the mistake of looking up.
Before me is the Storm. It’s a wall not of stone or clay, but of darkness. Like a gauzy curtain that hangs in a circle around our city, made of layers of mist and smoke and shadow, all the same color as the darkness behind my eyelids. There’s no escaping it; there’s no gap, and it’s ten times taller than the buildings it dwarfs.
The Storm is ever squeezing tighter, swallowing street and sky inch by inch. We in the fifth ring know that we’re the next to be devoured. The wilds of the seventh ring were taken long before I was born, but the farms and homes of the sixth were lost when I was a child. We live in a state of constant darkening; for years, sunlight has only reached as far as the third ring. A few years from now, perhaps it won’t reach even that far. But by then, Amma’s will be gone.
From the nearby watchtower, the stormbells clang a warning: A stormsurge is coming. I scan the street for stragglers, but I can’t see from up here.
Shoving the shutters back into their warped wood frame, I cross the tiny landing and leap down the stairs, into the main room where everyone’s gathered.
Her slow, dreamy song makes the clanging even more jarring, but Amma’s doing her best, just as she has for the last fifty years, running this home for the cursed. Her steps have
gotten slower and her back bowed, but still I’ll never be able to catch up to her, to do half as much as she does.
Without skipping a note, Amma gives me a worried look that asks me to hurry. She’s seated with her sitar in the center of the long room, with stormtouched in their beds on either side. Seven of them live here at Amma’s, mostly children, ones who got caught by the Storm—either beasts dragged them back during a surge, or they went and touched the stormwall—and were then cursed. The Storm doesn’t care how young you are or how promising your life might’ve been. If it manages to touch you, even just the tip of your pinky, that’s it, you’re cursed. Welcome to a lifetime of stares, jeers, and—if you’re really unlucky—my cooking.
I try not to draw Pa’s attention as I make for the door. He leans over the youngest, drawing an ikon on her arm that’ll help soothe her shivering. I’d try to get a good look at it, but the clanging of the bells tells me there isn’t the time.
“Vesper,” Pa warns as I pass him.
I jump at his voice, and my elbow knocks into the bowl at the edge of Gia’s bed, sending half-peeled shalaj roots flying. She makes a rude gesture with her left hand—her right is a gnarled twist of wood, courtesy of the Storm.
I wince, but I can’t stop to pick them up, no matter how precious food is.
Pa brushes his black hair out of his eyes—the eyes we share—and his disapproving gaze lands on me like an anvil. “Don’t go out there. They’ll find shelter. Don’t play hero.”
“Sure, Pa,” I throw over my shoulder, ignoring the certainty in his eyes that I can do no good, that I’m just a child, and not even a clever one at that. The front door rattles in its frame, and I plant my feet before unlocking all three deadbolts. The wind wrenches its way in, whipping at my clothes and flinging the heavy warped-wood door open. With the wind come other things: the wail of the Storm, the bite of the cold, a curl of mist that licks at my ankles. The stormbells peal once more, and the hollow of my chest reverberates with it.
Pa calls out, “Vesper, don’t—” but the wind steals the rest of his words as I step over the threshold.
The wind whips my hair into my face. When the Storm howls like this, with the taste of burnt sugar in the air, it’s rearing up for a surge. Violet lightning streaks through the layers of darkness, revealing the beasts within the Storm. As it flashes, it illuminates the silhouettes of a scorpion’s bulbous tail, the grasping talons of some massive bird of prey, the snarl of a gargantuan hound. An inhuman eye, glittering with violet lightning, looks down at me. Its gash of a pupil widens and then swivels up as something else catches its attention.
I follow its gaze. In the dim half-light, three red streaks fly toward the stormwall. The Wardana. Our guardians, the city’s first and last line of defense, armed with incredible ikonomancy, sworn to protect us all. Their thousand-and-one-feather cloaks grant them flight; their crimson uniforms gleam like beacons against the wall of blackness. A guilty thrill raises goose bumps along my skin.
The way they fly right at the Storm, prepared to fight—that’s bravery. That’s power. I swallow down the envy that rises like bile in my throat.
The three Wardana angle into a descent. Their trajectory brings them closer than I’d like; just two blocks over and two blocks stormward. They head to where the stormwall bulges, blackness growing like a belly distending. Another bolt of lightning illuminates the stormbeasts clawing at the storm’s edge, hungering to be born. My throat goes dry. If the Wardana can’t stop the stormbeasts from making it out, then we’re in danger.
The Wardana fly into action with a net of woven ikons, flinging it across the bulge. The net glows with pale blue light; it’s as thin as lace, as if they’re holding back a boulder with a spiderweb.
The woven ikonshield holds for a heartbeat, two, three—and then, in an explosion of black cloudsmoke, a massive beast claws through, roaring with the sound of a thunderclap. It’s made of the same churning black cloud as the Storm: a two-headed lion with a mane that shifts like smoke, eyes like pinpricks of lightning. Smaller beasts crawl after it, taking advantage of the momentary breach.
In midair, the Wardana draw their weapons—two spears and a smaller woven ikonshield—and attack.
Behind me, the wind slams the door against its frame, and I snap back to myself.
Farther down the street, a mossy green door swings open, and a squat woman shouts, “Quick! Come inside!”
I join my voice to hers. Two huddled figures run into the woman’s home, and her door slams shut. I scan the street for any other stragglers.
Something shifts in the alley across the street, but nothing emerges. My heart pounds and moss squelches underfoot as I tread forward, meeting the hungry-flat eyes of a woman huddled against a pile of rubble. Her coarse, saffron-colored clothes are worn and torn, her overdress tattered, her shawl full of holes. Her arms tighten around a small figure—a little round-cheeked girl.
“Come on!” I wave, gesturing at the door.
She pulls her child closer. I grit my teeth. Maybe it’s fear paralyzing them, but my coin’s on prejudice. The superstitious don’t like waltzing into a home full of stormtouched.
An inhuman scream like a thunderclap cuts through the wind, over the peals of the stormbells. An unearthly chorus follows—the calls of the lion-stormbeast’s entourage, the smaller beasts that’ve followed it out of the Storm. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Hurry!” I shout. The child twists in her mother’s arms, peeling back her shawl and meeting my eyes.
A shadow passes over me, a spear-wielding, cloak-clad shadow. The Wardana lands on our street, some six houses down—that’s way too close, we have to get inside now—but the mother just cowers against the wall. Does she want to die? Does she want to be dragged into the Storm?
Through her mother’s arms, the kid looks up at me with golden eyes. I glance over my shoulder at my footprints leading back to the door—just ten steps, and I’ll be safe inside.
But if I go inside and shut the door, any harm that comes to this girl might as well be my fault. Though, if I go after them and get killed in the process, Pa’ll spend the whole of the afterlife calling me mossbrained.
Well, I’m used to that.
Pushing off, I sprint toward the two of them as fast as my legs will take me. I track the Wardana out of the corner of my eye, catching flashes of blood-red leather and a pale blue glow from some kind of ikon.
The alley closes in around me, cutting off my view. The kid’s mother steps in front of her little girl as if protecting her from me. “Listen, there’s a safe place through that door,” I say in one breath. “You can’t stay out here, the beasts are too close.”
Her gaze flicks down to her kid, to the scales peeking from under her sleeves. Not prejudiced, then. Just stormtouched and scared.
I soften my tone. “I promise we won’t hurt you.”
The mother nods, and I grip her freezing hand in mine. The girl holds tight to her mother’s waist as I drag them at a run out of the alley.
I stumble to a stop at the alley’s mouth, my shoes skidding on mist-moistened moss, and throw out a hand to hold them back. Across the street, Pa stands in the open door, his face a mask of terror.
A spider-shaped stormbeast click-clacks across the street between me and Pa. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to one. Its bulbous body is made of the same substance as the Storm—black cloudsmoke that churns endlessly in whorls and loops—and its eight bulging eyes spark with violet lightning.
It stands a good two feet taller than me, making it probably the runt of the litter. But that’s little comfort as it snaps its pincers, tasting the air.
It turns to me, opening its maw.
My heartbeat quickens. There’s only one thing I can do. What Ma would’ve done.
“Go around it,” I tell the woman, shoving her forward when she hesitates. “I’ll distract it. Go!”
I sprint to the pile of rubble in the alley’s mouth and heave up a slab the size of my head, swinging it at the beast. It bats it away with one leg and click-clacks toward me with the other seven, clumsily, drunkenly, like a baby learning to walk. A terrifying baby with eight hairy legs.
Focus, Vesper. What was all your work stealing scraps of ikonomancy for, if not this? You’ve practiced. You must know an ikon for this. Anything.
Anything.
Thoughts dart through my mind as I back up. I shove my hand in my pocket, finding a stub of charcoal from the fire. With a shaking hand, I draw the first ikon that comes to mind, a basic ikon for light. A flare of light flashes the second I complete the ikon.
The beast falters for just a heartbeat.
My hand shakes. An elementary ikon for fire rises in my mind’s eye—but there’s too much moisture in the air for it to do anything but spark. I discard a half dozen more in the space of a breath. I have nothing.
The stormbeast fills my vision with its swirling-smoke body. Pa was right. I’m no hero. There’s nothing I can do. I should’ve stayed inside.
Its pincers snap at me, and my back hits a wall.
My knees buckle, and I slide down the wall, catching a glimpse from under the beast’s midsection of the street. I let out a breath, relief expanding in my chest, as the mother and her kid reach the safety of Amma’s.
But someone else steps out. Pa strides forth, armed with a pen in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. A circular ikon glints on the blade. Everything slows.
The beast snaps at me, and my head bangs against the wall, a whoosh of displaced air kissing my throat.
Pa raises his arm and sends the knife flying.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
The beast shrieks in my face, but its scream dies into a gurgle of grinding rock.
I open my eyes. Cloudsmoke pincers tremble an inch from my face. A pale grayness spreads across its eight eyes, dulling them, as if someone upended paint over its head. The grayness radiates from a single point: where Pa’s knife is embedded in its side. It reaches the tips of its pincers and the furred edges of its feet, and all is still.
I stretch out a shaking hand to the beast’s skin. My fingers brush cold stone. One ikon did this?
“Vesper!” Pa yells.
I inch sideways until I’m free of the beast and break into a run to him. Pa glances up at the sky as he grabs my arm and hurries me inside.
The door shuts behind us.
I lean back against it, gasping into the silence, meeting a dozen pairs of wide eyes.
Pa squeezes his eyes shut, but his relief lasts barely a second before he wheels on me, a flush reddening his tan skin and his gray eyes glinting. “What were you thinking?”
I catch my breath. “We just saved two people, Pa.”
“No, I saved three people. You nearly threw your life away.”
My cheeks heat. “It was the right thing to do.”
“If you can’t even protect yourself, you’ve no business playing hero.”
The mother and her daughter watch us, huddled together on the empty bed in the corner, clutching each other even tighter than they did outside. Their terror stokes a red-hot fury in my belly, one that melts the rest of my fear away.
Giving them as much of a smile as I can manage, I push past Amma and the stormtouched, heading into the kitchen. Four of them stare openly, but a few avert their eyes
in a pretense of giving us privacy. Red-haired Jem ever so sweetly slides a finger across her throat and grins at me.
“Vesper!” Pa’s thudding footsteps follow me into the kitchen.
I draw down the curtain as Pa stands with his back to me, gripping the edge of the counter. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and his voice comes out dead quiet. “When are you going to learn?”
My stomach sinks. Wisps of my hair fly around my face and stick to my cheeks, courtesy of the humidity and the static in the air, and I work my fingers through knotted curls, buying myself a moment. I know it’s not what he means, but a little rebellious voice says, “I want to learn, Pa. Teach me a few tricks, and you won’t have to worry anymore.”
He wheels on me, more frightening than the hairy spider baby. “Don’t start. Not now. Not when your foolishness almost cost you your life.”
I bite my lip. How do I make him see that ikonomancy could’ve saved me? I had time to write an ikon. If I’d known the one that turned the beast to stone, I could’ve saved myself. I wouldn’t need him. “If you taught me, Pa, I promise I’d make you proud.”
“Vesper—”
“Pa, I’d be dead if you didn’t know ikons. If I knew ikons, knew them properly—”
“Enough.” His voice booms through the kitchen.
My heart is in my throat. “Or what? You know every ikon under the Storm, Pa, and you don’t do anything. If I had a third—no, a tenth—of the ikons you know—”
Pa looks at me as if I’ve struck him.
I pause. I’ve said worse than that without him giving me that look. “What?”
“We need to go.”
“What? Go? Where?”
“There’s no time, just go pack.” He flings the mosscloth curtain aside, and everyone in the main room pretends like they weren’t listening.
Amma’s already on her feet, her cane thudding with each of her steps. Her white hair frizzes up out of her bun, giving her an otherworldly halo as it catches the light from the kitchen lamp. “Alcanar?”
Pa kicks aside the threadbare rug that covers the kitchen floor and raises the trapdoor beneath, climbing in. He pauses halfway into the tiny, secret room that serves as his bedroom and study, and meets Amma’s eyes. “We’ll be going soon, Amma.”
I raise my voice. “We can’t just go—Amma needs us.”
Amma puts a quieting hand on my shoulder. “Why now? After seven years, why now?”
Pa clenches his jaw. “Now they know I’m alive. They’ll come for me soon.”
“How?” I ask. “Why?”
Pa’s eyes bore into mine. “That ikon—I invented it.”
His words eat up all the sound in the room, save for the pounding of my heart. A knock comes at the door, loud as a thunderclap.
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