The Void Dragon

Book 2: The Shattered Lands

by Annabel Campbell

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

The next installment in the fantasy series from "exciting new voice in epic fantasy" (Publishers Weekly) Annabel Campbell, where a mage bereft of her powers must find out if she is destined to save the world or destroy it. Perfect for fans of Andrea Stewart, James Islington, and Samantha Shannon.

Release date: October 13, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

Aya let the shoulder of her gown slip a little lower, gossamer-thin fabric sliding over deep brown skin. There was a soft intake of breath from behind her and she smiled, enjoying the warmth spreading through her body, enjoying him. She could feel him watching, still too afraid to touch her but close enough that it changed the pressure of the air between them. She tipped her head, thick brown hair sweeping forward over her shoulder, revealing the full length of her neck. It was enough. A hand traced along her arm, his fingers so white that they were almost luminous in the low light: her pale Ellathian prince.

There were nearly a hundred reasons she shouldn’t be doing this; it was hardly the proper way for the Ameera to behave. There were probably even more reasons why he shouldn’t be here. But what did any of them matter? They were tied together now, linked by the iron will of queens, of mothers. If she were to marry this northern stranger, she might as well enjoy him first.

What’s more, she had to admit that she liked him. This awkward boy, who’d stood so still when they’d met that she’d thought perhaps he’d been carved from alabaster. His head had been bowed, his arms folded, his strange orange hair pulled into an untidy plait down his back. Had he not been introduced as such, she never would have taken him to be the eldest son of Ellath’s so-called queen.

Even now, he hesitated. Aya looked towards him with a slow, smouldering smile and was met with wide eyes that resembled shining pools of water. He was perhaps not the prettiest creature she’d ever beheld, but she liked his gentleness, his unassuming presence. He was still waiting for her permission.

“You may kiss me,” she said, her voice teasing him just a little, “if you wish.”

The corner of his mouth lifted and she felt that perhaps this smile was for her alone. “I do wish.”

The first sound was a deep boom, so loud and so close that it felt as if the sound had come from inside her own skull. Before she could even register it, the force hit them, blasting the glass windows inwards in a shower of glittering fragments. They were thrown backwards, their bodies tangled together, both of them slamming hard against the floor. There were shouts, the scent of burning, someone screaming.

For a second Aya didn’t move, her heart pounding, a shrill whine in her ears. She didn’t want to open her eyes, or lift her head, or find out what had befallen either of them. Part of her feared moving in case she found that she couldn’t move at all.

But denying something didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

Aya rolled onto her elbows, finding with some relief that the worst pain she felt was from some cuts on her arms and a stiff ache that was likely to become a bruise. She shook her head, making herself focus.

“Atellus, are you hurt?”

He groaned a little, taking longer to come back to himself. “I… no—Ameera, are you hurt?” He was already using her title, the closeness between them evaporating into the night air.

“No.” She was the first one on her feet, pulling her belt a little tighter, adjusting her dress so that it lifted away from the floor. She extended her hand towards him. “Any idea what in the Mother’s name just happened?”

He let her pull him up, his arms trembling enough that she could believe he was as surprised as she was. “No! I have no idea.”

Aya was already moving to the windows, her bare feet picking between the larger shards of glass, but she could feel the prick of smaller fragments digging into the hard skin of her feet.

“Ameera, wait. Be careful. You might cut yourself.”

She ignored him and pushed her arms between the drapes, which were now flapping untethered into night air. Everything was bathed in the flickering orange light of flames. Aya took a deep breath as she looked out on the smouldering ruins of the palace’s guest wing–the wing she was supposed to be staying in.

“I think I might have bigger problems, don’t you?” she said as Atellus came to stand alongside her.

“Trebaranus protect us,” he whispered, the words hitching in his throat.

Not the prince’s plan then, Aya thought, though she knew she might just be wishing that were true. Out loud she said, “Are you sure this wasn’t your war god’s doing?”

Either way, she needed to get away from him, away from any Ellathian who might benefit from her death, the death of the Dahrani heir to the throne. She needed to get back to someone she could trust.

As if on cue, the door to the room banged open, bouncing off the wall.

“Highness!” Nezhar almost fell over herself as she stumbled into the room, her brown skin stained gold in the firelight.

“About time,” Aya said, turning, trying to paint over her fear with calm authority. She was Ameera. She was a future queen.

Nezhar already had her blades strapped to her waist, though Aya suspected she’d never removed them–she’d never been fond of this plan in the first place. Nezhar’s eyes glinted dangerously as she turned them towards Atellus, her body sinking into a position of readiness. The prince stilled as he realised the danger he was in.

“Hold, Nezhar. I don’t think this was the prince’s doing.”

Nezhar’s fingers closed on the hilt of her sabre. “With all due respect, Ameera, he is Ellathian, and Ellathians just tried to kill you.”

“I would never—”

“Shh, be still, Atellus. We don’t know who tried to kill me. Think–would he have brought me here only to blow up the wing I was supposed to be staying in?”

Nezhar uncoiled, but only a little, her gaze mutinous in a way she only got when Aya might put herself in danger. “Whatever Your Highness might wish, the Ellathians are now our enemies.”

Aya took a slow breath. It would be easy to panic. Her guards had been in the barracks by the guest wing or stationed by her empty rooms; it was safe to assume that most, if not all of them, were dead. She was alone with only her personal guard in the heart of the Ellathian Empire. Her life had never been in so much danger.

“Wait…” Atellus had one hand to his forehead, beginning to come back to himself. “Ellath–the empire, it’s not one entity. You must not see this act as the will of all of us. Ameera, there were many who welcomed our union, who saw it as our best path to peace. The priests of Ardulath would not want war between our nations, and neither would the priests of Itelena.”

The sound Nezhar made was almost feral. “You want us to believe that trying to kill the Ameera was not an act of war?”

Aya stepped in front of her before she could do something they’d both regret. “War, exactly. War is only one of Ellath’s faces; Trebaranus is their war god. Where he profits, the Temple of Ardulath loses. He’s right. There’s still a chance.” Aya forced her guard to meet her gaze, tried to convey to her how important this was without uttering the words. Without the support of Ellath, Aya’s position back home was less than certain.

“You’re in danger here, Highness.” Nezhar’s answering gaze was just as fierce.

“On that, we are agreed.”

“I can send to the Leaders of Ardulath–and the palace guards,” Atellus said. “We can protect you.”

“Where are your guard now, Prince?” Aya asked, raising her eyebrows. Even in the flickering light, she could see a flush in the prince’s cheeks. There were no Ellathian guards banging on his door to secure the royal heir–he had been forgotten.

“I sent my guards away.” The prince swallowed. “And the royal guard will be—they’ll have gone to the Queen.”

Aya placed a placating hand on the prince’s arm. The Ellathian “royals” were that in name only. The power of Ellath belonged to the ruling priests, not to the Queen. Aya had agreed to this betrothal in good faith, to show the Ruling Six–the six Ellathian temples that ruled the empire–that she was committed to peace. She could not rely on the royal house to help her.

“You cannot protect me, my dear.” Aya softened her tone to the voice of the woman who had permitted him to kiss her, not the heir to the Dahrani throne. “Who else knew I was here?”

“No one,” he breathed.

“Good, then perhaps it’s better if my attackers assume they were successful.”

She saw Nezhar’s jaw tighten, her guard realising what she intended to do.

“If I’m dead, they can’t come after me. No one can.”

“Your mother will retaliate.” Nezhar’s expression was grim. “News of this won’t stay within Ellath. Think of what your family will—”

“My mother barely knows who I am any more, and the others…” Aya hesitated, her chest tightening at the pain she was about to cause. She drew a steadying breath and cast a sidelong glance at Nezhar. “It might be enlightening to see the Wazira’s reaction to my death.”

Nezhar’s expression soured further. “It’s too dangerous. You’re just handing her everything she wants–what if she doesn’t give it back.”

Nezhar wasn’t wrong. The Wazira was the Queen’s most trusted adviser and had been ruling the Queendom in her place for years. The Ameera’s death would be extremely convenient for the ambitious courtier; if Aya was caught by the wrong people, the Wazira was as dangerous to her as the Ellathians.

“Guards will be here soon,” said Atellus. “If you mean to do this, you must go now.”

Aya turned back to the prince, feeling a swell of affection for the steady determination in his voice. She knew it was foolish to trust him, that she was letting what she wanted get in the way of what she needed, but she couldn’t believe this man would betray her. If there was anything Aya knew how to do, it was how to make men adore her. “Then please, show us how we can leave without anyone seeing us.”

Naila dipped left at the last second, feeling the hot buzz of magic slice past her ear. Her breath was coming hard and fast, the metallic taste of exertion on her tongue.

Khalisa was relentless, throwing spell after spell, her voice booming off the stone walls arching above them. Naila felt surrounded by her words, echoes of magic folding back in on themselves, a web with Naila caught at the centre. She turned again, twisting out of the path of a streak of gold light, every hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Naila was no mage, so she couldn’t hope to block or counter magic as her teacher could. All she could do was sense and react, wait for the pattern of magic to shift down towards her teacher like someone drawing back the string of a bow. A holding spell, a searing light, a sharp shock that made Naila’s body twitch and her ears sing–there was nothing Naila could do except twist out of the magic’s path, or grit her teeth against it when she failed.

Naila’s power, on the other hand, was spread uselessly across the floor between them. Water seeped over slabs of stone, pooling in the cracks, a smooth mirror reflecting the light of Khalisa’s magic. It moved with Naila, hooked into her being in a way she barely noticed any more. But the ripples were only tiny vibrations, as if a breeze brushed the surface. At first, Naila had thrown water towards Khalisa in waves, or spun it into thin tendrils which snapped across the room like whips. They had struck against Khalisa’s shields, the attack shattering into mist, evaporating without ever touching her teacher. Now Naila’s mind ached like her arms, every drop of water a weight she could no longer carry.

Khalisa did not stop.

In fact, Khalisa had not stopped once in the last six months. Naila couldn’t exactly say when Khalisa had offered to be her teacher, or whether Naila had ever properly agreed. The mage herself was like a loosed spell, a blazing forward momentum that it took more effort to halt than to follow.

After Naila’s arrival in Awasef, she had approached The Great Library, Al Maktaba, with the letter from Haelius clutched in her fist like a promise, no idea how she would find the mysterious Khalisa Madib or if she even remained in the city. After their long journey from Amoria, the arrival at the library happened abruptly, everything Naila had been running to suddenly right there in front of her. The fragile strings tying her to her companions were already breaking, leaving her alone to face a place that felt both like the end of the road and her only way of moving forward. If she couldn’t find answers about what she was in there, then where else could she go? And if she couldn’t find Khalisa, how would she get into the library in the first place?

In Khalisa’s way, it had been her who found Naila. She’d appeared behind her at the library reception while Naila butchered the pronunciation of her name and snatched the letter right out of Naila’s hands. When Naila turned, she’d found an imposing woman in the blue jalabiya of a scholar with narrow, interrogating eyes and long braids that were more grey than black. Despite her loose uniform, it had been impossible not to notice the strength in her: the wide shoulders, the erect posture. Unlike Haelius, she was a mage who looked like she could move mountains.

Yet much like the wizard, she hadn’t even hesitated when Naila revealed the strangeness of her power, her eyes alight with interest rather than apprehension. The comparison to her former teacher was inescapable, memory manifesting as a dull ache behind Naila’s sternum. It was all still too fresh, the long months of lessons together in Amoria, the candle-smoke and parchment scent of Haelius’s study. Naila knew she was still trying to fold this new life into the shape of the old one, trying to fit Khalisa into the hollow Haelius had left behind.

But, in truth, beyond a certain intensity, the two mages were nothing alike. Since that first morning in The Great Library, Khalisa had drilled Naila endlessly: lessons in control and long, exhausting exercises in stamina. Where Haelius had nurtured her mind, filling it with the phonemes of magic and a scaffold on which to build her power, Khalisa’s lessons were physical. She wanted to see what Naila could do, to push both her body and her mind to their limits. She had no interest in the meaning of Naila’s power, or where it had come from. “Why does it matter?” she’d answer with a shrug. “The Wazira’s Magi won’t give a damn what manner of power you have when they come for you.”

Because, more than anything, Khalisa was teaching Naila to protect herself.

Leaning forward, Naila pressed her hands into her thighs, feeling the sweat-stick of her hair on the back of her neck. Her teacher had come to a rare moment of stillness, her arms folded in front of her, but Naila knew better than to think this was over. She made herself breathe, gulping down air into her burning lungs, forcing herself to be ready for Khalisa’s next move.

The mage’s voice was so soft, Naila could hardly make it out, but it was a building, coaxing whisper, drawing magic down towards her. Naila could feel it in everything: the energy laced through the stone of the cavern, the breath of magic on the air. Even the water, bound as it was to Naila, gave up its magic to Khalisa’s call. The mage was a pillar of both stillness and motion, her blue jalabiya rippling around her feet, while her thick braids lay heavy on her shoulders. Above her head, six golden orbs were blinking into existence one by one, crackling with power. It was Khalisa’s grand finale; the spell Naila could never escape.

Naila forced herself onto her toes, an ache spreading up the backs of her legs. Her vision switched into the other sight, the world overlaid with the currents of magic and anima that lived within all things. At the heart of it, Khalisa burned like a being made of light, her spell forming a dazzling aura around her head. The more Naila’s focus slipped towards magic, the more physical sensations drifted away from her; sounds became muted, Khalisa’s voice receding behind the thump of her own heart. There was a place between the physical world and the world of magic, a liminal space in which Naila could move like no one else. This time, she would be ready.

The six lights shot forward at once, arcing towards her, following a path lit in magic. There was a moment where Naila felt suspended in time, where she could read their future curving down towards her in six glittering threads. With the very last of her strength, she threw up thin discs of ice to meet them, blocking each path, severing each thread. Magic crashed against ice in a blinding halo of golden light. Khalisa’s voice still boomed across the space between them, her will pressing down against Naila’s, and the discs rang with an ear-splitting note, pitched on the edge of shattering. It split Naila’s mind between six different places, a different level of force needed to hold each one in place. But this was everything Naila had been training for over six long months. This time she would stop them.

A voice whispered right against her ear. Mother? Mother, where are you? We need need need.

All the discs fractured at once.

Naila didn’t even feel the magic crash into her. One minute she was standing facing Khalisa and the next she was on the ground, hot pain blooming across her back. She rolled onto her side, choking from the impact, her mind filled with whispers. We will find you. Find you. We need you. Mother, where are you?

It was them. Oh, Goddess, it was them.

The cursed dragons. The Sha’arin. She had heard them, exactly like this. A whisper from inside her skull. The panic felt like trying to draw breath into her winded lungs. Something in her coiled tight, a writhing desperation, a need to resist at all cost.

With a cry that wasn’t her own, she was back on her feet, her arm sweeping forwards with the might of her power behind it. Three sharp daggers formed in the air and streaked towards Khalisa in a blur of blue light. They punched through Khalisa’s shields like stones slipping into water.

Good. Another voice resolved from the whispers, clearer than the others. It felt like a thought that had surfaced from deep within her own mind. I am coming for you.

Then the whispers were gone, Naila’s panic ebbing away. She was left empty, sagging forward, able only to stare at what she had done. For a terrible, delirious moment, she didn’t know if any of the daggers had struck home. Khalisa was still–too still–one hand pressed against her cheek. She pulled her hand away and inspected her fingers as if she had just wiped them along a dusty shelf. There was a dark slash of red on her cheek.

Naila didn’t speak. She couldn’t. In that moment she had lashed out blindly–no, blindly wasn’t the word. She had seen it all unfold in front of her, as if the actions had belonged to someone else, as if she hadn’t been the one in control. She could have killed her teacher.

Khalisa merely raised her eyebrows. “Impressive. I knew you had it in you.” Naila watched numbly as Khalisa used magic to slice a strip of fabric from her sleeve and hold it against her cheek. “I expect that will leave a scar.”

Naila struggled to stand, her body trembling. How could Khalisa be so calm?

Her teacher crossed the room in brisk strides, water splashing under her feet. Above her, the reflections shivered on the stone roof of the cavern, making it look like they were underwater.

Khalisa came in close, looming over Naila so that she had to tilt her head back to look up at her.

“You’ve frightened yourself,” she said. “Good. You lost control there, didn’t you?”

Naila shivered. Control. It was a word that had stalked her life in Amoria, ever out of her reach. Is this what it meant to lose it?

“There was…” Naila started and then let her voice trail off. There was a voice, she’d almost said. Someone else was here. But there was no one else. Just her and Khalisa, alone in one of the stone caverns beneath the library. All was quiet and still, no sound of pounding footsteps in the corridors outside, no one shouting that dragons were attacking the library. She must have imagined it. She must have.

“I panicked,” she said instead.

Khalisa’s eyes narrowed, her gaze tracking across Naila’s face. “Perhaps I’ve been pushing you too hard. Look at you. Paler than an Ellathian.” She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. “I won’t apologise for it. You’ll meet far worse than me. Your control must be flawless, no matter what’s in front of you. Never give them a reason to believe you’re dangerous, unless you want them to fear you.”

Naila nodded, her eyes fixed on the blue fabric held against Khalisa’s cheek, watching it darken to black.

“You know what’s at stake if you reveal yourself to the wrong people,” Khalisa continued, checking the blood-soaked cloth, folding it in half and placing it back against her cheek as if it were nothing. “Fear is half of what’s behind the Wazira’s support. Our noble leader’s magi exist because people don’t trust us; they think we can’t be left to our own devices. They’re all too happy for us to be carted away into her army. They think it will keep them safe.”

Khalisa’s tone was haughty and she was looking down her nose the way she always did when she had to explain something she thought Naila should already know. It didn’t stop her from being right, though. Outside the protective bubble of Amoria’s glass, magic-users were in the vast minority. The existence of mages in Dahran had always been an uneasy truth, the kind only acknowledged in whispers and sideways glances, and “magi” had always been used to bolster Dahran’s army in its conflicts against Ellath. Now, though, more and more mages were disappearing from their homes, dragged away by the Wazira’s royal guard. It seemed the Queen’s adviser was gathering herself an army, but no one knew to what purpose–or where she would strike next.

“Hmm, nothing to say for yourself?” Khalisa stepped back from Naila as if to release her. “Well, that is unusual. Go on then. I’m done with you. I’ll clear up this mess.”

Turning, Khalisa raised a hand to begin the spell to gather the water, one hand still pressed against her cheek.

“Wait, I can do it,” Naila offered feebly. Khalisa would have to weave a complex web of magic, cupping the water within her spell just to move it. To Naila, such a feat was effortless, the element of water responding to her without the use of magic at all.

Khalisa just raised an eyebrow over her shoulder. “Control is also knowing when we are finished. There’ll be no more magic for you today. Be gone with you. And don’t let me find you in the library poring over useless tomes either. Go and rest. Eat something. Feel the sun on that pale face of yours.”

Naila did go to the library, but only because she didn’t know where else to go. Her feet carried her along stone corridors and up narrow staircases leading deeper into the mountain. Magic murmured in the walls here and in the hissing flames of lamps which cast golden globes of light across her path. It was nothing like the vibrant tapestry of magic in Amoria’s glass, but something old and deep that lingered in the mountain’s bones. The Wazira might be hunting mages now, but magi had built Awasef’s Great Library, creating the impossible labyrinth of caverns and corridors beneath the mountain.

When she reached the library proper, she hovered at the edge of it, much as she’d done on the very first day she’d seen it. She could almost remember the wonder she’d felt, grasping at the memory with slippery fingers. The cavern was enormous, so big it was like being back under Amoria’s glass sky. Bookshelves towered on every side of her: mad, impossible structures filled with more knowledge than a person could ever know, not if they had a hundred lifetimes. Once she’d been stunned to silence by Haelius’s study, and now before her were more books that even the wizard could dream of: parchments in Dahrani, Ellathian, and languages she’d never even heard of. She’d imagined it as a paradise–a palace of knowledge she could wander through, answers hovering at her fingertips.

Now all she felt was suffocating dread. The endless spines of books were old foes to her, and the eternal twilight of cavern was oppressive rather than peaceful. Naila wished she could recapture the hope she’d once felt here. Instead it was smothered beneath six months of dead-ends and failures, crushed beneath heavy tomes on elemental magic and bestiaries that spoke of dragons only as myth.

The only reassurance was that the library looked as it always did. Loose clusters of scholars whispered beneath lamplight, while visitors walked reverently between the bookshelves, as if they’d found a portal into another world. Naila’s favourite librarian was at his station as usual, his yellow robes fading to blue in the shadows. Nothing was wrong here. There was nothing to fear. The whispers she’d heard were memories, nothing more.

But if that were true, then why had she lost control?

“Eshabaha!” the bookkeeper greeted her cheerfully as she approached. He called her ghost, for her pale, Amorian complexion and all the hours she’d spent haunting the library. “Back for more books on dragons?”

She smiled in a way she wouldn’t have done for anyone else asking her that question. “You think you can find any more? You must have given me three hundred books on why dragons aren’t real.”

“I accept your challenge,” he answered with a daring smile. “But I don’t think you’ll have time for dragons today. The lobby sent this down for you.”

It was a simple piece of folded paper, her name written on the outside in the flowing Dahrani script rather than blocky Amorian letters. Naila was smiling before she even opened it.

I’m outside. Eat with me.

An invitation of only five words, with no further explanation or even a signature; Naila knew exactly who this was from.

Karameth was waiting for her.

The worst times were just after waking: the moment when Haelius opened his eyes but his dreams still clung to him, lingering like the last fragments of a fading spell.

Some nights he relived all of it: the smothering helplessness, his life unravelling between his fingers. He would see the line of bodies stretching away from him and feel a terrible weight drag his gaze along them, one by one by one. He would try to turn away, to close his eyes, but always he would find the terrible question in Malek’s eyes: is this you? And then the emptiness would creep over his face, the life leaving his eyes.

It was you, Haelius. It was your fault. All of this is because of you.

From those dreams he would wake with a gasp, sweat sticking his shirt to his skin, his hand clutched over his chest. There was nothing to do then but wait, curl in around the pain until he could smother it, burying it under all his layers of control. It was far harder to subdue than magic.

But those weren’t the worst dreams. The worst ones weren’t painful; they were wonderful. A courtyard filled with violet light, Malek’s head thrown back in laughter, lines wrinkled into the corners of his eyes. Larinne would be there, holding her glass of tchai with the tips of her fingers, her eyes bright with suppressed mirth. When she looked at him, the rest of the dream would melt away until only she remained–the wry curve of her lips, the light touch of her fingers on his, the way his heart felt cupped in her hands.

When he woke, there would be an awful, precious moment where he didn’t remember–where the dream felt more real than his life. And each time, the memories would return, as fresh and knife-sharp as the day they happened.

Malek was dead, Larinne was lost to him, and all of it was his fault.

There was no smothering that pain. He’d wait until the numbness rolled back over him, descending like fog. It would lie between his body and the rot at his heart, allowing him to exist at the edges. Existing was all he could do.

The clanging of the gong grew more insistent, the sound of bodies scrambling to readiness all around him. Haelius only had a few seconds to stand, to dress, to present himself, and yet he still couldn’t quite bring himself to move. Ahead of him lay another day, another round of pointless drills in Dahran’s sweltering heat. Another day of existing.

In the end, some deep instinct took over, forcing him out of the bunk and onto his feet. He was only just tying the sash of his coat, tucking the ends behind his back, when the commander stepped in front of him.

“Akana,” the woman barked, the way she did every morning, and Haelius stiffened to attention, as if he were a puppet and someone had yanked on his strings.

“Look at you. That uniform is a disgrace.”

Haelius knew better than to adjust it. He kept his arms by his side, his eyes fixed past the commander’s head, awaiting judgement. She leaned sideways to peer at the tangle of blankets behind him. Her expression contorted into one of disgust.

“Four months, Akana,” she spat. “Four months you’ve been here, and you still haven’t learned to obey simple instruction. I should have you flogged for insubordination.”

Haelius couldn’t help it. The tips of his fingers twitched, hooking into threads of magic as if it were nothing. With barely a blink of effort, the blankets pulled straight behind him.

The guard at the commander’s shoulder moved forward in a blur. Before he could even flinch away, an iron grip tightened on his arm and the white heat of a knife cut into his wrist. The world lurched sideways, the sens