In this epic sequel and conclusion to the Darkening duology, which has been called “enchanting and wildly clever” (Ayana Gray, New York Times bestselling author of Beasts of Prey), Vesper Vale, once savior to a city plagued by cursed storms, finds herself facing an even more sinister threat when an ominous light summoned by the Great King seizes control of the city.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Sunya Mara’s The Lightstruck, which is out August 29th!
Vesper Vale sacrificed everything to save her city from the cursed storm. After becoming a vessel of The Great Queen, Vesper awakes from a slumber three years after her life altering choice.
What she finds isn’t a home freed from the terror of the storm, but one where its citizens are besieged by the even more sinister force of The Great King and his growing army of the lightstruck—once regular citizens who are now controlled by the ominous light encroaching on the city. And the people are all looking to Vesper, now revered as a goddess after her sacrifice, as their city’s only hope.
To save the rings from the Great King, Vesper must contend with the obligations of being a deity to her people and the growing chasm between her and Dalca, the prince she swore never to love. Haunted by the guilt of their past choices and faced with the pressures of a city near ruin, Vesper and Dalca find themselves torn between the growing factions within the city and the royal court.
But in order to save her city from the light, Vesper must face the power most outside of her control—the goddess within.
They say I didn’t want to be born. That I stayed in my mother’s belly far longer than I was welcome. That Ma was furious, storming about the healer’s rooms, commanding them to hasten my departure.
She wasn’t callous. She was needed by her people. The Storm was a great torment, a wall of black stormcloud and violet lighting that birthed rampaging beasts and bestowed curses on all whom it touched. Every day it squeezed our kingdom tighter—in Ma’s day, it swallowed the farms of the sixth ring inch by inch. In my time, it was halfway through the fifth. Only our ruler, the Regia, had the god-given power to stop the Storm. But he was weak, and my mother believed she could do what he could not.
And she loved me, but what did the needs of one child matter when thousands were suffering? Any mother could protect her own child. But to protect a kingdom? That required a hero.
Ma left me in my father’s arms and died trying to save us all. They called her a criminal.
Seventeen years after I was cut out of her, I fought the Regia’s son before all our people, in the sands of our great stadium. They saw me weep, they saw me fight, they saw me end the Storm.
Ma would’ve been proud. I died a hero.
**
The world of the dead isn’t so different from the world above. The palace still gleams cold and indifferent, perched like a crown atop our five-ringed city. The fifth ring is still home to the poor, where buildings crowd together like a mouth full of crooked teeth, where the same old moss still coats our roofs, in a layer of wet, mildly fragrant greenery that’s springy underfoot. We even have the ghost of the Storm; but down here it’s a wall of white nothingness that encircles the city. It can’t be entered; it can’t be fought.
There are some things that are different. Up above, there’s only one way to enter the city: you’re born into it. Here . . .
A crack of distant thunder. Here one comes.
The pale ghost sky opens up, parting like an eye, just wide enough for something small to fall through. A thunderous rumble follows as it—a body, with limbs folded tight—descends to our phantom city. Here comes the newly dead, fresh off of life.
The body falls like a feather on the wind. Gently swinging to and fro.
The slate roof of the watchtower creaks under my weight as I rise to my feet, without taking my eyes off our newest resident. Not until I get a read for where they’re falling, where their soul considers home.
The radius of their swinging narrows. Not the fifth ring, then, nor the fourth. Interesting. When I first came here, most folks came from the outermost ring, the fifth. Curses, malnutrition, that sort of thing.
But now folks come from all sorts of places, with all sorts of interesting stories. Why, I met a peculiar fellow just the other day who’d died of heatstroke. No one died of heatstroke when we all lived under the damp shadow of the Storm.
There’s no more Storm up there, of course. Not since I ended it. Not since I took within me the god who gave the Storm its power. To save every single living soul up there, all I had to do was sacrifice my own.
I like to think of what Ma would’ve said. Possibly something noble and stoic, like: As it should be.
Our newcomer drops down, down . . . toward the first ring.
A shiver runs up my spine. Not many die up in the first ring, where the palace sits like a flicker of frozen flame.
The newly dead disappears from view, falling somewhere in the palace gardens.
I itch to go directly, but it’s not worth getting yelled at for going in without backup.
I fix the direction in my mind, taking measure of the distance so I can report it accurately. From the third’s watchtower, it’s several hours’ walk. Lucky, then, that we don’t need to walk.
I take a breath, bracing myself, and sprint toward the roof’s edge. I leap and my heart jumps into my throat as I plummet.
I touch the ikondial at my throat and the cloak’s black feathers arc around me, guiding my plummeting dive down the side of the watch- tower. Sandstone blocks whiz past my nose, faster and faster. I roll to the side, hurtling past a balcony that would’ve flattened me, and roll again to miss another.
The balcony I want speeds toward me, filling my vision, so close I can see the cracks in the stone—
I pull up. The cloak grows taut as it catches the air and tries to slow my descent. My stomach drops—I’ve pulled up too late—I twist, getting my legs under me—and land with a thudding impact that rocks through my knees and up my spine.
The crack of my landing reverberates through the balcony, sending shudders up the glass-paned doors. From within, the sounds of bickering fade into startled silence.
I straighten up. The pain in my legs fades away, though I don’t doubt they’d be broken in life. Nashira pokes her head out the door, blinking at me with her golden eyes. “You do that once too often.”
I shrug her off. “Can’t die twice, now, can I?”
“I’d say so, for most people. But you’ve done one impossible thing—why not two?” Her crooked grin makes me prickly. She’s teasing. But I don’t like the reminder that all the doing is behind me. I’m done. All that’s left is—
“Oh,” I say, as my thoughts interrupt each other. “There’s another one.”
The others glance up at me from their various positions around the room. Most wear blood-red uniforms, near identical, save for changes in fashion—extra-thick shoulder pads, black banding around the arms, a few with their family ikons embroidered on their chests. In life, most were Wardana—the city’s sworn protectors, armed with ikon-forged weapons, who fought off the beasts that came from the Storm. In death, we’re a welcoming committee.
Nashira pumps her fist. “Yes!”
A couple others make unconvincing sounds of excitement. “Have fun,” one of them offers.
She turns on them, scowling. “Where’s your spirit?”
An orange-haired man glances up from his card game. “If she’s going,” he says, pointing a card at me, “then what do you need us for?” “That’s not the point,” Nashira says. Her eyes gleam with the tell-tale sign she’s working herself up into a good fury.
I sigh, tuning out their argument. He says something about the ghouls, she says something about having each other’s backs. I make my way to the balcony’s edge and leap.
The thousand-and-one-feather cloak catches me right away. I swoop lower, gliding over third-ring rooftops.
Nashira was the one who welcomed me, who found me when I showed up down here. With her golden cat-slit eyes, dark hair, and slinky, sultry grace, I’d mistaken her for her brother and thrown myself into her arms. My cheeks warm with embarrassment just thinking about it.
When I last saw Izamal Dazera, he was lost in the Storm. I haven’t seen him down here, so he could still be alive. I hope so, even though I wish I could see him again.
“Hey!” Nashira calls after me. I glance over my shoulder. She’s flying fast in a cloak of her own.
They called her a hero, too. One of the only Wardana to come from the fifth ring, home to the poor and the stormtouched. All the kids at Amma’s home idolized her, and we’d all mourned when we heard she’d lost her life.
She laughed herself silly when I told her that she was my hero. That I’d dreamt of wearing blood-red, of flying, of protecting everyone I loved from the Storm. Through gasps, she’d asked, “The girl who ended the Storm looks up to me?”
I don’t know. Is that who I am?
I wait till Nashira catches up and tell her, “They fell in the first.”
She keeps pace, and we fly low, just a few feet above the stalls of the third-ring market. Sprinkled amongst the crowd are folks who seem a little more faded than they would’ve looked in life. The colors of their clothes, their skin, their eyes—all of it dimming to gray. The faded ones raise their heads as we pass, and the weight of their gazes makes me fly a little higher.
A twisting alley below is packed with a dozen of them—even fainter than those who still go about their day-to-day business. These are transparent, and they stare openly, eyes wide, mouth agape. These are the ghouls.
My fists clench. I ignore their eyes. There are two ways out of the underworld. Some move forward and pass on. When I came here, I went looking for Amma. I walked my childhood streets until I found the building we lived in: Amma’s Home for the Cursed. It had been burned down to its bones up above, but here, it was resurrected. My old friends were inside, but Amma wasn’t. They told me she’d come with them. She’d seen that they were safe, tucked in those who needed it. Then, between one breath and the next, she was gone.
Some of us move on. Some of us linger here, eking out what we can from this place that looks so much like home. And some of us try to go back. But there’s no going back. Those who try, who can’t accept death, they become ghouls. They lurk around, reaching, clawing, siphoning something from the rest of us, until we become like them. They’re drawn to the newly dead, like moths to light. Hence, our welcoming committee.
They watch me more than anyone. I have the Great Queen within me—all her wrathful power that once fed the Storm, turned it violent, gave rise to the beasts of cloud and thunder—all that is now in me. It’s her they feel. Her power they want.
When I came here, Nashira had to fight them off me. They had grabbed me with blue-pale hands, their eyes blank, their mouths gaping.
On my hands, the darkly iridescent lines of the Queen’s mark rise up. I haven’t used her power in some time, so it’s gathered in me like oil in a clay pot, thick and full and aching to be released.
I touch the ikondial at my throat, urging the cloak faster. Nashira calls after me. I ignore her—she’ll catch up.
The second ring sprawls below: gilded manors with real glass windows, petite gardens with ornamental trees. A white dome of a temple looms up ahead. I glance back as I pass it. At a particular angle, it morphs into a squat black manor. There are many other places like this—places where a building up above was demolished to make way for another. Down here, both old and new exist, superimposed upon each other. To fit it all, the second ring is twice as large as it was above. Something moves out of the corner of my eye—a massive white serpent. I turn so fast my neck cracks. No. It’s the ghouls shambling below, packed so close together that they resemble a pale river.
They clamber up the steps from the second ring to the first, dozens of them, in a fitful stream. Up through the golden gates, through the outer palace. I frown. Who would fall here?
I get closer. They lurch toward the vast palace gardens.
A memory rises, of air thick and honeyed with fragrance, of glimpses of red as I followed a boy through the twists and turns of the hedge wall. My pulse quickens.
The ghouls shamble into the hedge maze.
The hedges run together in dizzying patterns and dozens of dead ends—it’s a mash-up of memories of the dead, rather than a perfect depiction of what they were like when I last walked within them.
I don’t bother stopping and taking the hedge on foot. I fly straight to the heart of the gardens, to a glassy, still pool shielded by lush trees. It’s as I remember.
All that differs is the dark-haired boy, half-submerged, swinging a Wardana spear. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he shouts.
His voice—I know that voice.
I twist the dial at my throat, killing the ikonomancy of the cloak. Curses. My heart squeezes as I fall from too high, knees buckling as I land in a crouch.
Half a dozen ghouls have beat me to the water’s edge. They turn to me with their pale, filmy eyes, wavering uncertainly between me and the newly dead.
I draw the Queen’s power from where it pulses, like a second heart beneath my own. Ribbons of black stormcloud rise and knit themselves across my skin, weaving themselves into a protective barrier, as close to my skin as armor. It’s a trick I learnt early on, when Pa and I were experimenting with my new power. Methodolog y, he would bark, figure it out one step at a time.
One of the ghouls reaches for me. The wisps of black cloud that make up my armor curl around his fingers. The stormbarrier doesn’t deflect his touch; it welcomes his fingers and transforms them into harmless vines, each studded with tiny white flowers.
I push him aside. Others come for me.
I breathe and let the Queen’s power pour from me in dark ribbons, in whorls of cloud. They rise into a shifting wall that encircles me and the boy in the pool. Drip by drip, the Queen’s power leaches out of me, but I can maintain the wall for some time yet. I turn my back to it and rest my eyes on the boy.
Black, wild hair like a bird’s nest. An unyielding jaw. Lips I once knew.
Water laps at my ankles. I wade across without taking my eyes from him.
His features are no longer a boy’s. He’s sharper around the jaw and cheekbones, as if his adulthood made him come into focus. He’s developed a furrow between his brows, and his lips curl down, until he sees me.
Prince Dalca. The Regia’s son. His eyes—a summer’s sky blue that’s too vibrant, making everything else more faded in comparison— they fix on me, shining with wetness.
Ice runs through my veins even as my skin grows hot. I reach for him.
My fingers fist in his collar. Buttery smooth blood-red leather, the ikon embroidery rough. His lips part with a soft sound; his breath puffs against my cheekbone. I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes.
Heat rises through me. A crackling, lightning heat.
My fist clenches tighter around his collar. A stormbarrier wraps around me.
“Vesper,” Dalca breathes.
His eyes are so bright, gleaming with emotion. His hand encircles my wrist, softly, as if he’d let me choke him.
There’s a rushing in my ears. I can’t stand the way he looks at me—I can’t stand this crush of feeling, of fury and frustration and—
I’ve hated being trapped, being dead—but at least he wasn’t here—and now—
Dalca draws in a breath.
I let go, with too much force.
He loses his balance and falls, sending a spray of water into the air.
Dalca was there when I ended the Storm, when I became the vessel of the Great Queen. He held off her counterpart and enemy, the Great King, and gave me the time I needed to bind the Queen. He should be ruling, taking care of our city.
His choices led to Pa’s death. He played his part in mine. But I still remember the taste of his lips. I remember him weeping for his mother; I remember him setting his jaw and walking with me into the endless wall of the Storm. I don’t know what it is that I feel for him, not anymore. I’ve hated him. I’ve cared for him—maybe even something more—but no. I don’t know. It’s all a jumble in me, a furious, twisting jumble that makes my chest feel too small to hold it in.
But I’m ashamed. I’ve a job, and this is no welcome. He blinks up at me like a half-drowned puppy. The words I’m sorry stick in my throat. “I deserve that,” Dalca says as he picks himself up. “That and more. But we have to move. It isn’t safe here.”
Move? I blink at his back as he steps between me and the ghouls, his spear at the ready. Oh. He doesn’t understand yet what’s happened to him.
I unclench my jaw and search for the words, for the usual script. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The water has thoroughly soaked his shirt. Through it, golden lines curl across the skin of his back. A large ikon of some sort. I’d say it’s the Regia’s mark if I didn’t know better. The mark of the Great King—the ikon that once bound the god to his vessel—was corrupted by Dalca’s family. Dalca wouldn’t dare use it. He’d have no reason to, after we ended the Storm.
The Queen’s mark dances across my skin—a living mark, unlike the unmoving golden lines of the Regia’s—and it tells me the storm- barrier can hold only so long. I clear my throat. “Dalca. What do you remember?”
“I . . .” A fleeting shadow crosses his eyes, but Dalca shakes it off. “We have to get you safe first. There’s too much to say.”
You don’t understand, I want to say. But the words stick in my throat, mingling with a fury that sits lodged like a burr. I can’t stop looking at him. Him being here—it’s irritating. Like wasps under my skin. I don’t know why. I forgave him. Or at least I thought I did. I thought I’d moved on. Forgotten him.
Dalca’s movements are urgent, but he takes a brief moment, his eyes sparkling, full of warmth and emotions I won’t name. “After all this time, everything we tried . . . I can’t believe you’re back.”
I drop my gaze to the water, to the rippling reflection of the garden. “I’m not.”
Water sloshes as he takes a step forward. “What?”
“It’s the other way around.” I’ve given the speech so many times. I’m afraid you’ve moved on to the next life. This is that life. I’ve found the gentlest words for others. But all that comes is, “You’re dead, Dalca.”
A long, cold silence falls. He breaks it. “I can’t be dead. If I’m dead, then . . . I’ve failed.”
Failed? Surprise makes me glance up and meet his wide, agonized eyes. “Failed at what?”
Dalca doesn’t hear me. His gaze is distant, focused somewhere inside. A dozen expressions flicker across his face, and then his shoulders relax. The furrow between his brows disappears, and he gives me a small smile. “Okay.”
I let out a slow breath. So many are angry when they learn the truth, when they feel like something’s been stolen from them. That’s how I was. Angry, and sad, and a thousand other awful, prickly things.
Dalca, though . . . Was that it? Was life such a burden to him that he could put it down so easily? An ache builds in me, somewhere deep. “Dalca . . .”
He opens his mouth, then frowns, tilting his head. “Do you hear that?” He glances over his shoulder. “Cas? Yes, I can hear—”
I follow his gaze, moving closer to see from his angle, but there’s no one there.
“No—wait—” His body grows suddenly more vivid, even as his eyes lose focus. The black of his pupils eats away the startling blue.
A creaking groan comes from the direction of the stormbarrier. A ghoul’s tried to push through; a spray of pebbles tinkles down, joining the mound of things the others have been transformed into. I’ve never seen them this desperate.
Dalca whispers, “Not yet, please—”
It clicks into place. His vibrancy. The ghouls’ persistence. He’s not dead, not yet. He’s on the verge.
My chest hollows out, as if my breath’s been stolen. Dalca’s still alive.
“Vesper—” Dalca reaches for me. “There’s so much to say— They’re trying to bring me back—”
A hot thrum of something—envy? Do I envy him? Of course. But him staying here, trapped like the rest of us . . .
I brush his fingers away with my knuckles. “Then go.”
“I don’t—” Dalca’s hand closes over mine. It’s warm but without weight, as if it were made of unspun yarn. His voice trembles, his other hand brushing my shoulder. “Vesper, come with me.”
I flinch. “It’s too late. I’m dead, Dalca.”
The dark of his pupils eat away at the blue as he focuses on me. “You’re not dead. Not any more than I am.”
A strange, knowing shiver runs through me. “But I am.”
“No, Cas—tell them to wait—” He raises a hand, pushing away something only he can see, something from the world of the living.
I grip his hand tight, but it’s growing more immaterial. “Dalca. What do you mean, I’m not dead?”
Dalca’s gaze sharpens. “We’ve been trying—You’re still . . . Your body . . . Your heart is still beating.”
A veil shatters. An earthquake trembles through my chest, a distant drumbeat growing quicker, louder. My vision grows crisper with each beat, as my heart makes itself known, as it sends blood pulsing through- out me. He’s right. How have I not noticed?
“Vesper, please.” Dalca’s breath is a whisper. His eyes glow blue, his hair deepens to inkiest black, his skin gleams golden, sun-kissed brown—and then his whole body flickers, like a flame in the wind. He presses a kiss to my fingers. “Vesper—they’re bringing me back. I can’t stay—I wish I could—There’s so much I need to—”
He’s gone.
