Showing results by author "Jane Washington" in All Categories

Beatrice Harrow was raised in seclusion, separated from the Read Kingdom and protected from the mysterious mechanisms of the other four races, but they are not as blind to her as she is to them. Even before she steps foot inside the Academy, they know her name and they know the truth about her birth. She is one of the Tainted: a mixed-breed creature with the blood of a monster, clinging to legitimacy by the genes of her human father. She is more beautiful, more powerful, and more despised than any other being in the Read Kingdom.

The past few months have reduced Seraph Black to a permanent state of fight, and now it is all that she knows. She is fighting her friends and family to go off on a suicide mission to rescue Silas, she is fighting the fragmented memories that clamour for recognition inside her mind, and she is fighting a guilt so magnificent… it might just force her to betray the very people that have sacrificed so much to keep her safe. She had asked for space, and it had been given to her in the most heart-rending of ways, leaving only one of the four brothers remaining by her side.

Some people exist in the blessed light of day, but I'm not one of those people. I exist in the bleak grey of a post-twilight world, where the warmth is sucked from the air and the weightless shadows come out to play. I wasn’t always like this, but a year ago something terrible happened, and now I have a darkness inside me.

I was born with a curse that spun a violent storm around me, seizing every beautiful and fragile thing that flittered into my life, tearing it all from my grasp as effortlessly as the wings of a butterfly are torn from its body. Or so I thought, anyway. It all changed when they came for me, when they dragged me to trial for my crimes. I should have faced execution, but fate is a fickle and funny thing, taunting me with the knowledge that I was always destined to be so much more.

Seraph Black’s entire world has changed. There are no more secrets in her life, but knowledge comes at a price. Memories take their toll. Reality demands a due. The silent shadow of her past has stepped into the light and revealed himself. He has lost everything, and the only thing left for him to do is to make sure that she loses everything as well. Survival is a complicated game, but her pairs are determined to become experts at it before they run out of time. If only they knew about the brand of pain in her portraits that was never there before, because something is seriously wrong.

Lilou Adler is a student at the Bastan College for Applied Physics: a magic school focussed on training adult witches and warlocks to become Enforcers. As an Enforcer-in-training, she is one of the many tasked with keeping each generation of fairy tale creatures on track with their fates.