The king is dead. The world is lost. Long live the queen…
We’re thrilled to share the cover and preview an excerpt from Dawnbreaker, the second book in Jodi Meadows’ Nightrender duology—available November 7, 2023 from Holiday House.
Warning: spoilers ahead for book 1 in the series!
The king is dead. So long live the queen.
The world tilts upon the edge of a knife. The thin membrane of magic separating the human and demonic planes is all but gone. The attempt to save it has failed, and Nightrender, immortal champion of the gods, lies gravely injured. Hanne has become High Queen on the Mountain, but in the face of this unspeakable danger, she has chosen political ambition—and war against other mortals. Rune—recently married to Hanne, but in love with Nightrender—is lost in the Malice after a disastrous battle, trapped in a realm of surreal and corrupting evil where the air carries with strange whispers.
But Nightrender, weak, flightless, alone, knows she must raise an army and try again to seal the rift. And Hanne—the serpent girl, always too cunning to be trusted, too hungry for power—feels a seed of doubt begin to grow. And Rune, wandering alone in a landscape of mercury seas, spires of black glass, and winds blowing ash, finds another lost soul who may guide the lonely king back to his people…
In this second and final installment of the Nightrender duology, the circle will close, and the world will be saved—or burnt to a cinder.
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Dawnbreaker
Jodi Meadows is the author of the Incarnate and Fallen Isles trilogies and is a coauthor of New York Times bestsellers My Lady Jane and My Plain Jane. You can visit her website at JodiMeadows.com, and connect with her on Twitter @jodimeadows and on Instagram @unicornwarlord. She lives in rural Virginia.
CHAPTER ONE
Rune
Rune breathed in red.
He breathed out red.
Red was thick on the air, filling his lungs. Dirt and blood covered his torn armor. Grit gathered between his teeth. With every inhale, he felt the slime of corruption coating his insides.
Nothing was clean in the Malice.
But Rune—he hardly noticed. He stalked a circuit around his cell, shoulders hunched and fists flexing, while the last hours—days? weeks?—raced through his mind. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here. Time lurched and stumbled in the Malice. It could have been eternity.
He hated that he was here, a hostage meant to buy an armistice between the Nightrender and her ancient, unkillable foe: Daghath Mal.
It was a false truce—one that would break eventually. But until then, Rune was trapped.
This captivity was a sacrifice he’d made willingly. At the time, it had seemed like the only option. It still seemed like the only option, but burn it—Rune was needed at home. In Caberwill, where his mother had just been killed, slaughtered by a rancor. There were rites. A funeral. Perhaps a spare moment for his own grief?
He had a whole kingdom to tend to.
Sisters.
And a wife.
There was the war with Ivasland, as well… although given how his army fared when a malsite erupted in its camp, it was hard to say whether Caberwill could continue the fight.
Burn it all. He needed to get back home. He was king.
A caged king.
His cell didn’t even have a door. Or windows. (It had, briefly, but they’d disappeared.) And though he’d thoroughly inspected every inch of it, there was no crack, no escape: the walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of unyielding bone. Human femurs and ribs glittered in the omnipresent red light.
He knew whose bones they were, too. Dawnbreakers.
Rune stopped in his tracks, biting back a tide of hopelessness. He had to be strong. The Nightrender wouldn’t let him stay here forever. She’d said as much.
You are my soul shard. I would see you free.
Her soul shard. The knowledge burned through him, just as bright and hot as before.
It had come like lightning. In the thick of battle, when their eyes had met across the throne room, Rune had spoken her name. Her true name.
Medella.
She’d been fiercer after that. Deadlier. No longer hampered by whatever dark magic had made fighting excruciating for her before. But even that hadn’t been enough to save Rune’s men. They had died one by one until only he was left, Daghath Mal’s talons at his throat.
Thus, the truce.
Slowly now, Rune resumed his circuit around his cell.
He’d had a lot of time to think about what had changed—why he’d been unable to remember the Nightrender’s name until that moment, why he hadn’t known they were bound together—and the only answer he could fathom was this: whatever had damaged her memory had also affected him. It was a deep, soul-level wound that had smudged out the knowledge of her name.
But when he’d hurtled into the Malice to help her, he’d healed it. He had chased the pull of his soul to hers, and it had brought him clarity. Focus. Her secret name.
And a kiss.
He shouldn’t have done it. He was already obligated, and besides, a soul shards wasn’t meant to be a lover—merely a companion, a friend. But he’d touched his lips to hers and kissed her anyway.
And she’d kissed him back. Then she’d… thanked him? He had no idea what to make of that.
You are my soul shard. I would see you free.
She would. He believed she would come for him the moment it was possible. But in the meantime, he was stuck here, unable to do anything but pace. He needed to be useful to her. Somehow.
“Burn everything,” he muttered.
The cell began to tremble as a section of the wall dilated open, revealing a red-lit hallway.
Rune’s heart kicked as he backed away, half expecting a rancor—or worse—to enter. But the passageway beyond was clear.
No, that wasn’t right. There was… something.
He tilted his head, trying to listen. The castle was silent, and yet it wasn’t. What he heard—what he felt—was simply… the opposite of noise.
No, it was far more than that. It was like a voice yawning up from the deep—except the voice was nothing, and it made everything else nothing, too.
And it wanted him.
With a physical jerk, Rune wrenched his mind back, focusing on the thrum of his heartbeat and the scuff of his boots against bone. He cleared his throat just to hear the sound.
The opening in the wall remained, all the bones pushed aside, red mortar squeezing out in thick, wet clumps.
Well, he’d wanted a way out.
The Malice wanted him. He knew that. It would rot him from the inside out if he didn’t fight it. And if he failed… it would corrupt him. Eternal subjugation to the Dark Shard.
If he lived, but left this place with malice in his heart, he would never be the king he wanted to be. Nor the man.
Rune knelt, reaching into his boot, letting his fingers touch the dark feather he’d sheathed there, given to him by the Nightrender herself. But he didn’t withdraw it. Not yet. Not while he was being watched by this malignant nothing. It was just… He needed the reassurance that it was there, the Nightrender’s parting gift.
“What would you have me do?” he murmured.
The opening waited.
Rune tensed his jaw, watching, but nothing happened. It seemed the rancor king had decided to loosen his leash, allowing Rune to roam. If he dared.
Well, then Rune he dared. He would explore. He would learn. And he would do whatever it took to destroy Daghath Mal when the time came.
Whatever it took.
He breathed in red.
He breathed out red.
CHAPTER TWO
Hanne
“They’re calling for your head, Your Majesty.”
This was unfortunate news, but Hanne didn’t take her eyes off her game. She was winning. Barely. She couldn’t let this report, no matter how unsettling, distract her when victory was so near at hand.
“They’re saying that you’re responsible for the events at Silver Sun.”
Careful not to muss the bandage on her hand, Hanne drew a card. Four. Burn it. She needed a queen or king to take her piece over the finish line.
Still, she moved her small golden bell forward four places, opting not to bluff her way farther—not right now, when she wasn’t sure what her face was doing in reaction to the declaration that Embrian peasants wanted her dead.
The parlor was quiet as Hanne’s opponent drew a card. Nothing about Nadine’s expression so much as twitched as she moved her emerald hound across the board, placing it one spot ahead of Hanne’s bell. “How do they think Hanne could possibly be responsible? She was here with us when that awful machine detonated.”
Maris, the lady-in-waiting who’d brought the message in from the aviary, placed a basket of curling strips on Nadine’s side of the table, along with an opal-handled magnifying glass. Piece by piece, she pulled out the letter to be read as a whole.
Cecelia and Lea, Hanne’s other two ladies-in-waiting, hurried over to align the strips according to the coded numbers in the left corners. The papers were small—light enough for a dove to wear around its leg—and sealed with the tiniest drop of wax. The letter was written in Embrian micro-code, known only to members of the royal family and their most loyal staff. By necessity, that included the four ladies-in-waiting Hanne had brought from home.
Once the papers were ordered correctly, Nadine peered at the coded writing through the glass. She raised an eyebrow at Hanne. “It’s from your royal mother. The people are saying you are the one who came up with the design for the mal-device. They’re saying that when Ivasland was struggling to finish it, you went there personally to build it yourself, and that getting trapped in a malsite was all a ruse.”
“Oh, of course. I built it with all of my extensive mechanical training.” Hanne rolled her eyes and read for herself, the tiny dots and lines and circles glaring up at her.
We formally request aid to defend Solspire against the angry mobs…
“Really.” Hanne snorted. “Mother wants my help, does she now?”
“Consider it a compliment, Your Majesty.” Lady Sabine Hardwick, an elderly Embrian woman, put her knitting on the windowsill before standing and stretching out her spine. The cracks were audible even from the other side of the large parlor. “Queen Katarina never asks for help. That she is requesting it from you is a sign of her respect.”
Sabine might think she knew Katarina Fortuin after years of serving her, but Hanne knew her mother. The queen of Embria was not paying Hanne a compliment. Every interaction was a command, a test, or a dismissal. This was the former.
“Back to the game.” Nadine tapped the deck of cards. “It’s your turn, Hanne. Draw, or I will claim victory.”
“My life is in danger, you know.” Hanne pinched the top card between her fingers to draw. Four again. Really? That left her two places before the finish line. Hanne moved her bell ahead five places. The next card—however poor a value it showed—would grant her victory.
Nadine drew without calling Hanne’s bluff. “Your life has been in danger since before you were born. Find a different excuse for losing this game.” Then Nadine moved her hound right past Hanne’s bell—and across the finish line.
Hanne barely restrained herself from stamping her foot. “I think you cheat.”
A smile curled up the corners of Nadine’s mouth. “Are you calling my bluff?” She tipped the card but didn’t show its value.
“No.” Wrongly calling a bluff on a winning move doubled a loser’s pay-out when playing for money. Hanne and Nadine were only playing for fun, but the etiquette still mattered. “I’m saying you cheat. No one should win all the time. It’s a game of chance as much as skill. Unless Sardin truly favors you above all others.” Sardin was the Numen of Luck, a popular choice among thieves and gamblers.
“There’s no way to cheat at Mora’s Gambit. You make the moves your card allows, or you bluff your way farther along the board and pray your opponent hasn’t already seen the card you’re pretending to have drawn. For example, moving five places when all the fives had already been drawn from the deck.”
“Wait—“
With a prim smile, Nadine gathered the cards and quickly shuffled them, her face a mask of innocence. As though there were no way to arrange a deck to benefit one player over another. Next time, Hanne would have Lea or Maris shuffle. Both of them were terrible at shuffling.
“Your Majesty. Nadine.” Sabine’s tone wasn’t quite scolding, as no one scolded a queen, but she managed to sound exasperated without crossing any lines. “Recall the aforementioned letter.”
“Yes!” Hanne swept the golden bell and emerald hound off the board and dropped them into the wooden box that held the extra pieces. “Let’s recall that. The people are calling for my head, as Maris so kindly phrased it.”
Maris paled. “That was the way your mother phrased it, Your Majesty.”
“None of us should phrase it like that again,” Sabine said sharply. “It is unbecoming of young ladies to make light of such things.”
That came dangerously close to criticizing two queens, but Hanne let it pass. She looked again at the slips of paper.
It wasn’t a long message, by Queen Kat’s standards. Only twenty-three strips, with a few duplicates in case a bird were shot out of the sky, or killed in a sudden spike of malice as it flapped its way across the continent.
With the magnifying glass pinned between both bandaged hands, Hanne read through the entire note.
Johanne, my little dove—
After the unforeseeable tragedy at Silver Sun, the common people have declared that you, my beloved daughter, are somehow to blame for the malice device. Not only do they claim that you are responsible for the concept and design, but that you yourself went to Athelney to finish it when the incompetent Ivaslander scientists could not.
It is absurd. Your father and I deigned to receive the leaders of this little uprising, but after so many baseless claims—that you were not actually trapped in a malsite, but off galavanting with Ivaslanders—we were forced to decorate the gates of Solspire with their heads. Unfortunately, new leaders have arisen and because of your actions, they are calling for all of our heads.
I’m afraid this may be an actual rebellion, one our army isn’t equipped to handle at the current moment. There was, unfortunately, a mal-device thrown into our army’s camp as they marched toward Ivasland to join with Caberwill in battle, and a significant number of our men were transformed into livestock by the uncontrolled dark magic. Dead livestock, now. The country people butchered many of them for food.
We formally request aid to defend Solspire against the angry mobs. They are unusually hardy, and their numbers will only grow stronger as more join them from all corners of Embria. Remember, they blame you. You must help us settle this.
With regards, your adoring mother,
Queen Katarina Fortuin of Embria
P.S. Opus and Grace: Faster than we’d agreed, but even so, effective.
Really? Queen Kat should have known better than to bring up the plan, even in code.
It had been simple: unite Caberwill and Embria by marrying Rune, and quickly use that alliance to punish their common enemy in the south. Ivasland deserved it, given their breach of the Winterfast Accords. Once Ivasland had been dealt with, Hanne would remove the queen and king of Caberwill—over the course of years, not days—and then, after she had pushed out an heir of her own, remove her husband and any remaining competition until no one remained to challenge her.
Hanne would be not just a queen, but the queen.
The Queen of Everything.
Excerpt from Dawnbreaker / Text copyright © 2023 by Jodi Meadows. Reproduced by permission from Holiday House Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.
