BOOK 1

  THE QUEEN’S CRASH LANDING

  Every tale needed its shadow — the twist, the thorn, the reason to care. Because honestly, without a little suffering, what was left?

  A comedy? How very pedestrian.

  Eydis had skimmed through enough epics to see the patterns. An underdog would rise, destiny got quoted as if it were legally required, a forced, stale romance between a doorknob and a doormat topped it off, and somehow friendship always saved the world.

  She would have yawned if an explosion outside hadn’t suddenly assaulted her eardrums. Legs crossed, one hand cradling her head, she reclined on what remained of her throne, tapping out impatient beats on the armrest while waiting for her unforgivably late guests.

  Fresh rubble tumbled past her stained-glass window, chased by rolling blackened sheets of smoke, but all she could think was:

  “Where was I?”

  Right. Right. The heroes’ shadows.

  Villains.

  With villains there was never any shortage of options. Incineration, drowning, parboiling, vivisection, or the disappointingly pedestrian sudden heart attack.

  Some stories really had no sense of payoff.

  Eydis admired the black gloss on her nails, a colour perfectly matched to her night-silk gown. Cliché would have called her the—

  Oh.

  “Maybe,” she decided aloud, “I’m the twist.”

  A fresh blast shook her castle, a dramatic applause she had neither asked for nor appreciated. With an eye roll, she mused. Of course the “Virtuous” Saintess and her Prince-Charming-Lite sidekick were early. Conquering the realm would have to wait.

  Father had taught her the arts of alliances, invasions, and the soul-crushing craft of kingdom budgeting (shudder). None of it, apparently, had prepared her for the ultimate weapon.

  The power of... loooooooooove?

  Plaster shattered from above, on a direct collision course with her gown. She caught every piece in a web of invisible force, then banished the lot through the nearest broken window. Dress still flawless.

  Castle…

  She scowled. "Another mess for the Chancellor to patch up.”

  The double doors buckled inward and then flew apart. In stepped the Saintess’s sidekick, looking as though he had fallen off the cover of a third-rate romance novella. His hair, eyes, plate, and probably his ego all gleamed silver.

  "Surrender!” Damien commanded. “Your reign—”

  “—of evil has met its end, light wins, something-something ‘the people’?” Eydis finished for him. “Give me a percentage. How close?”

  “That’s—I—” He caught himself and scowled.

  “You could work on your subtlety. Still, I suspect demolishing the place saves on remodeling costs.” Eydis spoke in a calm, detached tone, even as her face risked revealing the anger slowly gathering.

  Thinking about why she was angry hurt her head, so she simply quit thinking. Stick to the script.

  What script?

  The thought froze her. She was just about to glance over her shoulder when a crashing clang stole her attention.

  The knight hefted his broadsword, his holy emblem blazing with golden light, probably meant to blind her with self-righteousness.

  “A necessary evil!” He really said it. With feeling. His eyes were suspiciously damp.

  She hadn’t even done anything yet.

  “Return her to me,” he pleaded.

  Her?

  Rising smoothly, Eydis advanced, her studded-leather heels scarcely brushing the floor. “The Saintess? Send a portrait next time. I prefer to know whom I’m accused of kidnapping.”

  "Liar! You’ve unleashed darkness upon this world and stolen its purest light!” He lunged and struck swiftly.

  Here’s to predictability.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Eydis slipped to the side as shadows peeled away from her fingers and twisted into twin serpents that lunged straight for his throat. He countered with a burst of raw light, the effort plain in the way veins bulged along his bare arms.

  “Darkness isn’t just an absence of light. Silence isn’t the absence of sound,” she said, easing another ribbon of shadow toward his face. “Both were here long before you were.”

  He jerked left but not far enough, a smoky slash marked his cheek. “Nonsense!" he snarled. “Darkness is a choice!”

  “Choice?” she said, chuckling as the word sounded preposterous coming out of her mouth.

  Blade and serpent crashed again, shuddering the ruined hall. Light against shadows. The same battle, over and over and over.

  But then, predictability gave way the moment the floor split apart, not from his holy sword and not from her shadows.

  Something ancient, hungry, sapient seemed to wake. It swallowed the last fragile light of Mythshollow, and darkness closed around her.

  For a while, it was a pitch-black abyss, until one by one, small, flickering things glowed like fireflies scattered through the night. She moved her hand through the lights, frowning. Glyphs, though none she recognised.

  Dusty gold threads laced the glyphs together, then flared and coiled like vines, searing her skin. Pain lanced through her mind. She clenched her jaw and tasted blood.

  But her final thought was…

  So this is the twist.

  Time lost its shape. It stretched, collapsed, looped, curled into knots, and, at last, seemed to forget it was meant to exist at all. Eydis was falling, and even her stomach and her head had given up protesting.

  Of all deaths, this was certainly more insulting than a heart attack.

  Was this her sentence to descend without end?

  Nothing existed in the void except soundless despair until a faint, quiet voice found its way in. It sounded far away, yet the urgent edge reached her clearly.

  ‘There is more to you than this, Eydis! Remember your purpose!’

  She didn’t bother wondering if it was male or female. The voice was both and neither. It felt like a location, as if she were standing beside a sea she’d only read about, waves brushing against a shoreline that didn’t exist in her kingdom.

  Somehow comforting. Somehow annoying. Because the voice sounded so certain, even when she couldn’t quite place why or how it sounded so familiar.

  Remember? That nearly made her laugh. Her memory was a library: meticulously sorted, stored, never erased.

  Purpose, though, had never been her engine; curiosity had. Rather than rotting in Mythshollow’s endless grey, she had chased whispers of golden fields and azurean skies. She fought. She conquered. And with every victory the path to the Kingdom of Light, the Celestial Empire, grew nearer.

  But then there was her. The Saintess. That woman again.

  To Eydis, she had always been nothing more than a title. A name spoken in prophecy. A concept, not a person, nor someone she should actually know.

  So why did Damien speak as if she should?

  Had she forgotten something? No, that wasn’t possible. Right?

  An invisible force yanked her upward, or outward. Gold seared bright behind her closed eyelids. Braced for fire, for pain, and, she wanted to scoff, for divine judgment, she felt nothing of sort. Her first sensation was… a smell, neither of charred flesh nor burning brimstone.

  Cleaning fluid…

  …sliding down her face?!

  The second thing she registered was the voice. Shrill, whiny, pitchy, and deeply perplexing. No one had spoken to her like that in… well, ever.

  “Bet you’ll think twice before hogging your homework, you four-eyed freak!”

  Eydis, for once, didn’t disagree. Four eyes really were pushing it. But wait… was she the target?

  Blurry vision smeared the world into a watercolour mess. Eydis reached for her neck. Still attached. Excellent. Floating around bodiless while forced to listen to this nonsense for eternity would have been a new low.

  The whining continued.

  “You know,” Eydis said, or tried to. Her voice sounded higher than usual. “Stress does terrible things to your mind. And skin, apparently.”

  Squinting at the vague shapes moving around her, she added, “Although in your case, it might just be too late.”

  The silence lasted for a few seconds, followed by a laugh, followed by a snort to smother said laugh, then finally, a loud gasp.

  “Are you calling me old? You. Are. DEAD. DEAD!” the same voice all but screamed, making Eydis’s head throb as her ears readjusted.

  The predictable flood of curses and threats ran their course, ending with a boot slamming into her side.

  Ah. Not dead. Just painfully, inconveniently alive.

  “Wonderful,” Eydis muttered. “Ow.”

  The kicker shifted above her. “Shut up, freak.”

  Another girl whined, “Tiffany, seriously, why are you even wasting your time?”

  Eydis did not bother reacting. Her body felt drained for some peculiar reason. And this eyesight situation was—her fingers brushed something cool. She brought the object closer and squinted.

  Spectacles. Four-eyed… oh.

  Well, that was new.

  When she pushed the spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, the world finally sharpened into clarity. A group of girls loomed above her, youthful faces, eighteen as the oldest. Their arms were folded in perfect synchrony, smugly, and oddly all of them wore identical clothing. Students?

  Looking down, Eydis discovered she was wearing the same stiff, scratchy green blazer over a white shirt tucked into a plaid skirt that indecently skimmed her knees. Her hair was pulled back into a lopsided ponytail. Messy.

  Offensive.

  Working through the knots, she found something tangled there and pulled it free.

  An orange leaf fluttered between her fingers.

  Maybe she had died.

  Bright light. Too bright. Worst of all, this body felt wrong. It might not be hers at all. Eydis pushed herself upright, but her arms and legs ached and resisted as if they were strangers to movement, confirming her inkling dread.

  Where am I? And where is Damien?

  Tiffany sneered. “Where do you think you’re going, freak?”

  “Does this freak have a name, or do you just lack creativity?”

  “Cut the crap, Eydis.”

  "Eydis, you say?” Eydis smiled, letting a hint of her canines show. “Interesting.”

  A piercing scream froze them both. All around Eydis students went rigid, heads jerking up, mouths falling open, their face contorting gradually into creeping terror. She lifted an eyebrow and traced their gaze upward…

  The sky began to peel apart ploddingly, almost performatively.

  First the ground, now the sky?

  Whether this place was hell remained an open question, yet the ragged tear in the sky was far from promising. It resembled deep claw marks gouged by some colossal thing that had tried to tear through reality itself. And it did.

  The eye materialised by degrees, a mountain-sized sphere of veined flesh forcing its way through the gap. Its pink pupil glowed and bled unnatural light across the sky.

  Eydis knew danger on sight. She raised a hand and willed the shadows to rise. They refused. No tendrils of darkness, no power stirred.

  Absolutely nothing.

  She stared down at her hand. It was rough, dirt-streaked, blood crusted beneath her chipped, unpolished nails.

  For the first time, she felt that cursed, useless thing.

  Fear.

  Drawing a breath, she clenched her jaw, tightened her fists and looked back. The eye was still there, but the tear was gone. And now, she finally noticed something else.

  Beyond the eye.

  Higher.

  The sky.

  Vast and unbroken. A deep, endless blue. Wisps of cloud drifted lazily, just as they did in the stories she had read.

  She laughed, a bitter sound, a wondering sound. So this is my silver lining. Astonishing.

  Powerless now, did that mean she’d fall like every villain before her? Maybe, maybe not. But she had never been one for easy endings.

  And the Queen of Shadows didn’t believe in inevitabilities.

  Ch1, p1