Love, magic, gods, and monsters collide in the thrilling conclusion to the Soul of Shadow trilogy, a romantic fantasy for fans of Twilight and Teen Wolf.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Dreams of Ruin by Emma Noyes, which releases on November 17th 2026.
When Charlie Hudson awakens after her Trial, it’s to find that nothing will ever be the same. The king of the gods is plotting to destroy Asgard. Charlie and her brother are trapped a world away from the people they love most. And worst of all, she’s become the very thing she hates most: a night mare.
Charlie’s transition is anything but smooth. Stuck in Helheim Palace, she must train her new shadow magic alongside dozens of soulless mares who would gladly turn her over to the enemy if they discovered she’s Loki’s true heir.
Her only hope is Elias Everhart, her once-sworn enemy who has somehow become one of her closest allies. He’s promised to help train her mare abilities—an easy idea in theory, if her magic weren’t malfunctioning… and if being near Elias didn’t make the darkness within Charlie grow bigger and more all consuming by the day. Charlie is in a race against time to reconcile the powers warring within her. Because if the threat on Asgard isn’t enough to kill her… love certainly will be.
Dreams of Ruin by Emma Noyes is the thrilling conclusion to the Soul of Shadow trilogy, where the only thing worse than becoming a nightmare, is loving one.
EXCERPT
Charlie Hudson wasn’t ready to wake up.
Not if it meant leaving this sunlit haven filled with beauty and goodness and possibility and peace. She’d watched Odin take his place on the throne with the satisfaction of someone who had worked all her life for precisely that end. As he’d settled in, establishing his connection to Yggdrasil’s endless supply of power, she’d felt an unquestionable sense of rightness.
Something she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
She sighed, rolling over under the covers. It had been so long since she’d had a good night’s sleep. One without nightmares or waking up in a cold sweat. One that actually left her rested. But this sleep . . . mmm, this sleep had been delicious. Far from a nightmare, her dream had been like a movie. She’d witnessed every step of the Allfather’s journey to the Throne of Ash—the wars, the bargain with the spirits of nature, the ascension thereafter. Nothing could top that final image: a flowering meadow teeming with wild magic.
Wild magic. Even the words were beautiful, though she didn’t fully understand what they meant.
Maybe, if she didn’t open her eyes, she wouldn’t have to return to the real world, with its tests and homework and dangerous creatures lurking in the forest. Maybe she would drift back to that delicious meadow.
“Come on,” she whispered, burrowing deeper into her pillow. “Why’d I have to wake up now?”
“Charlie?”
What the Hel?
What was her brother, Mason, doing in her room? His voice was more hesitant than normal, softer. He never came in to wake her up.
Reluctantly, she let her eyes flutter open.
Mason was sitting beside her bed, his light brown hair and small collection of freckles so familiar. For some reason, she felt disappointed, like she’d been expecting someone else. And why did Mason look so weirdly concerned?
“Morning,” she said, voice hoarse. Gosh, how long had she slept? “Did Mom send you in here?”
Mason’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
She scrunched her nose. “And what is that smell? Are you wearing a new cologne?”
His eyes darted back and forth, searching her face for something. What, though? An answer to whether she liked his new cologne? Well, it wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever sniffed—sort of metallic and coppery, as if he’d sprayed the essence of nickels and pennies on himself. An odd choice. Mason smelled . . . well, he smelled like confusion.
What the Hel am I even saying?
She shook her head, focusing back on her brother. After searching her face, he must have decided that he didn’t like what he found, because his forehead tightened as if he was in pain.
“What?” she asked, pushing up onto her elbows. “Look, the cologne is weird, but it’s not that bad. If you’re worried what Lou will think, we can get you a new—”
Her voice died in her throat.
She wasn’t in her bedroom.
She wasn’t even in their house.
The room in which she’d awoken was actually quite nice, with a queen-size bed covered in numerous quilts, a padded rocking chair with a stuffed penguin set onto it, a worn purple cabinet, and a wooden floor partially covered by a woven rug. But nothing about it was familiar.
“Where are we?” she asked, glancing out the window. All she could see was a cloudy October sky and a few tree branches waving in the breeze. “What happened?”
Mason’s forehead tightened further. “You . . . don’t remember?”
“Don’t remember what?”
He bit his lower lip, glancing around the room. As he did, his cologne seemed to alter somehow, taking on a heavy, halting sort of scent, like that of leather or velvet. Somehow, Charlie knew it was the smell of hesitancy. There was something Mason didn’t want to tell her.
What nonsense, she thought. I’m clearly still half asleep. Emotions don’t have smells. You can feel them, or you can see them on the face of another person, but you can’t smell them. Not unless you’re a . . .
A . . .
With alarm, her eyes dropped to her body.
Her legs were covered by a quilt, and she was dressed in a cotton tank top she’d never seen before. And her arms . . .
Their shape was just as she remembered: lean muscle from years of training in the circus and a few scattered freckles. But what frightened her were the long, round cords that now circled them.
Cords made of shadow.
The shadow cords were perhaps an inch in diameter and had the consistency of thick clouds. They didn’t touch her skin, instead floating a few millimeters away, though they were clearly bound to her body. They started at the base of her palm and wound all the way up to her shoulders, drifting slowly in a counterclockwise direction, like snakes winding up a tree. And when she jerked her arm to the side, the shadows followed.
They looked just like the cords that Elias often conjured.
Elias.
With that one word, everything came back to her: The camping trip. The party. The fight with Rattatosk. How they won, actually beating him. Except Elias had been hurt. Slashed by Rattatosk’s claws laced with deadly venom. He’d collapsed to the forest floor, and when Charlie realized that he was dying, the whole world had become a tunnel. Her surroundings blurred, and she could see nothing but that tunnel’s end, nothing but the goal of keeping Elias Everhart alive. It was as if she’d become possessed.
She and Mason had dragged Elias’s dying body all the way to Helheim. She’d used her magic—more magic than she’d known she was capable of—to teleport them from the state park in northern Michigan all the way back to Silver Shores. Then they’d used Elias’s dödssten to portal to the underworld. They’d run through a maze, faced down undead wolves, and ridden skeletal horses all the way to the Palace of Hel. Once there, she’d lifted the bodies of Mason, Elias, and the helhests using only magic, easy as anything, and stormed Loki’s great hall.
Dread seeped into Charlie’s stomach. “Mason,” she said slowly. “Where is he?”
