It’s May 7th, and you can preorder it here.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at Chapter 1!

Lo crouched at the foot of the slender stone bridge, her cloak blending with the darkness. Across the chasm, Castle Cazal stood against the stars, a sharp silhouette clinging to a rocky spire. The keep’s obsidian walls reflected no light, lending it an aura of gloom.

The last time she had visited, a single window glowed high in the central tower, but even that feeble light was now gone. Where was Nathan Ouvrard? And more importantly, where was Nabu-bal-idinna and the damned necromancer he’d run off with?

Kaethe, the goddess of death, believed they might come here since it was Jaskin Cazal’s ancestral seat. It was Lo’s only lead.

“I suppose they could be inside, sitting there in the dark like weirdos,” she muttered. “Gods, please make this easy for me.”

She rose, wincing as her kneecap banged into one of the bridge supports. Her divided soul attracted misfortunes large and small like bloodflies to carrion. She took extra care crossing the bridge. Tentacled monsters dwelt in the mist below; the way her luck was running, if she slipped, she’d probably fall straight into an open maw.

Toward the far side, her footfalls changed from stone to wood. The drawbridge. Happily, it was lowered, permitting access to the keep. She shrugged off the concealing cloak, stuffed it into her pack, and strode to the stone lintel carved with leering gargoyles. Lo banged a fist against the door, the hollow thuds muffled by the fog.

After a long wait, the door creaked open, revealing Nathan’s mortifex servant, Vigo. His giant frame filled the doorway, white hair gleaming in the moonlight. Pale irises with pinpricks of flame regarded Lo with icy disdain.

“The master is away,” Vigo said, his deep, gravelly voice devoid of recognition even though they’d just seen each other a few weeks before. “Come back later.”

Heavy rings with rubies and sapphires glittered as he started to shut the door.

Lo jammed her boot into the gap. “I watched Nathan walk through a gate from Kaethe’s domain less than a fortnight ago. He was headed here.”

“His Grace did stop home briefly,” Vigo conceded. “Then he left again by carriage.”

“Left for where?” Lo asked, tamping down her impatience.

Vigo eyed her haughtily. “I’m not at liberty to say. Now remove yourself before I do it for you.”

Lo craned her neck, trying to peer past his broad shoulders into the darkened foyer. “Is anyone else home?”

The question seemed to befuddle the mortifex. “Such as?”

“Like, say, Jaskin Cazal?”

Vigo stared at her. “The master informed me that Jaskin escaped his black mirror. However, I have not seen him.”

Lo chewed her lip, considering. There was no way she’d leave without searching the keep herself. Vigo had served the necromancers of Vendagni for a thousand years. He would say whatever Jaskin told him to.

But she’d prefer not to fight him head on. Mortifexes were dangerous to say the least. It was time to find out if her ability to lie had returned, now that she’d left the land of the dead.

“That’s a shame,” she said, holding his burning gaze. “However, Nathan left an important relic for me in his workshop.” The falsehood rolled smoothly off her tongue, buoying her mood considerably. “I must retrieve it posthaste.”

Vigo crossed his arms. “I know of no such relic, and he would have left express instructions if that were the case. You mistake me for a fool. Be gone before I toss you into the chasm.”

He heaved his shoulder against the door, but Lo wedged herself into the gap. “I’m here at Kaethe’s bidding,” she snapped. “Let me pass or I’ll open a portal and send you to the depths of the lower planes.”

Vigo threw his head back and laughed, a harsh bark. “Piss off,” he declared.

“As you wish,” she replied a bit breathlessly, still caught in the crack of the doorjamb.

Lo reached for her shadow magic and ripped open a churning vortex at Vigo’s feet. The mortifex roared as he sank into the maelstrom — but then the black wind of the portal sputtered and died.

Shit! In a rage at losing her consort, Kaethe had locked the doors to her realm. That included portals.

Lo looked down and bit back a startled laugh. Vigo was trapped in the stone floor up to his chest like a sheep in a mire. He struggled and cursed, but the half-formed portal held him fast. Lo forced the door wide and stepped inside, keeping away from his flailing arms. She scooped up the candelabra that Vigo had left on a side table, venturing into the drafty hall.

“Nabu!” she called out, her voice echoing off the black walls. “Kaethe’s not angry with you, she just wants you to come home. She misses you terribly!”

More lies. Kaethe was in a towering fury. But only silence answered her. Well, besides Vigo’s bellows.

With a sigh, she hurried for the stairs and began to search the keep floor by floor. She found nothing animate, not even Nathan’s ash servants. Just room after empty room, the furniture covered in black sheets. Eventually, she reached Nathan’s workshop. Sinister tools littered the worktables — saws and blades and hooked implements whose purposes she didn’t care to guess at. Row upon row of glass jars lined the shelves, filled with viscous fluids and floating specimens. The stench of decay mingled with acrid chemical odors.

Using a spark of elemental fire, she lit the melted stubs of black candles affixed to the tables. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves created a labyrinthine maze along one side, packed with grimoires and moldering scrolls. Lo paced the room, peering into the shadowed recesses, but found no sign of the two fugitives.

The real problem was that Nabu-bal-idinna was not, in fact, a mortal man who had stumbled over Kaethe’s tower and fallen in love with her, as everyone believed. Far-fetched as it seemed, he was really the sun god Bel, whom Kaethe had bewitched. As long as Bel remained in her tower, he would not remember his true nature. But now that he had run off with Jaskin Cazal, his memories would return.

And Kaethe claimed that Bel was not a very nice god at all.

Lo’s desperate gaze fell on a long row of ornate mirrors dominating the far wall. Wraith-like figures stirred within the smoky depths, the spirits of Nathan’s ancestors. Their pale faces shrank back when she approached.

Lo rapped sharply on the first mirror. “All right, pay attention,” she said, “I have some questions, and you’d best answer truthfully unless you want the Vigo treatment.”

One by one, generations of necromancers drifted into view, filling the mirrors with their ghostly reflections. They wore antiquated garments from centuries past, eyes gleaming with malevolence… and a touch of fear. They remembered the woman who had banished two of their kin to the netherworld.

“When was the last time you saw Jaskin Cazal?” Lo demanded, moving down the line of mirrors. “Speak!”

A gaunt specter in a high-collared doublet with a devilish pointy beard bowed his head. “Not since you took his own mirror away, mistress,” he whispered. “This I swear.”

The others quickly echoed his claim. Lo swore under her breath. Another dead end. Her eyes roved the workroom, searching for any clue she might have missed.

“If Jaskin were on the run,” she said, turning back to the mirrors with a hard stare, “where do you suppose he’d go? Think carefully now.”

The spirits muttered amongst themselves, a susurrus of dry whispers.

“The ruins of Vhaskali?”

“No, no, the hidden ossuaries beneath Llum!”

“Fool, those were swallowed by the quakes long ago! The Whispering Barrows, more like.”

Lo listened with growing impatience as they bickered, tossing out names that meant nothing to her.

“Belladonna has your answer, Shadow Soul.” The voice, feminine yet harsh as a rasp on bone, cut through the others. Lo quickly found its source — a mirror second from the end.

There hung the specter of a dark-eyed young woman. She was missing her left ear. Belladonna. Nathan’s cousin, Lo recalled. The specter lifted a finger, pointing deeper into the room. “Jaskin’s journal. Third bookcase, behind the jar of toenail clippings.” Her mouth twitched. “Jaskin always was a meticulous record-keeper. If he has a secret hideaway, it will be there.”

Lo strode into the maze of towering shelves, following Belladonna’s directions as she scanned the titles. The Shadowbinder’s Compendium. Ars Notoria. Nine Hundred Types of Ash and Their Uses. The Body Snatcher’s Ossuary. Others were scientific tomes on plants and animals, horticulture and biology. Jaskin Cazal had harnessed the power of the Grand Menotte to bring life to the darklands.

“The next shelf,” Belladonna called. “On the bottom.”

Lo crouched down and saw a thick volume. She slid it out and opened the brittle pages. They were filled with spidery handwriting. She began to read, lips moving silently as she deciphered the old-fashioned script.

“Through the blessed Darkness I have found enlightenment. By weaving together the Elemental Magicks — that of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire — I have coaxed the Night Blooms to unfurl their petals beneath the triple moons. In my glass garden, these delicate flowers take sustenance from naught but starlight and shadow. A miracle of elemental power, made possible by the undead mortifexes I have bound to the Grand Menotte!

“Next I shall turn my attention to the trees and mosses, those stolid ancients who remember when the Sundering first fell. If I can but persuade them to embrace the Eternal Night, then the eastern forests shall rise anew. And what a dark Eden it shall be! Insects that sing only to the constellations, birds who navigate by the ghostly lines of force, the small scurrying mammals who know no fear of light.

“But I must make haste. The voices, ever present, grow louder by the hour. Madness claws at the edges of my mind, and I fear that time grows short. I am determined to see this work completed ere my faculties abandon me completely.”

Lo sat back on her heels, considering. Jaskin’s words painted a picture of a man on the precipice of sanity, but there was no denying that his experiment had worked. The forest she had just traveled through was a testament to that. It had not seen the sun in a thousand years, yet trees, plants and animals thrived within its moonlit haunts.

Across the White Sea, in the land of her birth, daēvas had done much the same. Bending the forces of nature to adapt to a world sundered between night and day.

This made her think of her parents, and how Kaethe, in her fury at losing Bel, had hurled Nazafareen and Darius back to Nocturne. Two days. That was all the time Lo had spent with them before they were ripped away once more.

But dwelling on the past would not help. She had to find Jaskin and Bel. Only then would her debt to Kaethe be paid. Only then could she find Cas and bring him home with her, to marvel at the Acropolis of Delphi and the storied Rock of Ariamazes. She missed his quick wit, the way he could always startle a laugh from her, even in the darkest moments. She prayed to any god who would listen that he and Felippa had found their father and brother in Prydwen.

Lo forced herself to focus on the present. Castle Cazal was a dead end. If Jaskin had planned to return here, he’d have arrived already. No, she needed another way to find him. If the journal failed, Nathan was her last hope. He knew his ancestor’s twisted mind far better than she did. And perhaps some of Nathan’s necromantic spells still worked. She shut the journal and stood up.

Across the room, one of the candles sputtered out. Then another. And another. One by one, as if snuffed by an unseen hand.