Verwandte Artikel zu Servant of Earth

9780593818367: Servant of Earth
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593818369 ISBN 13: 9780593818367
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A USA Today Bestseller

In the underground Fae realm, only the strongest and most ruthless have power—but a young human woman forced into a life of servitude is about to change everything.

Kenna Heron is best known in her village for being a little wild—some say half feral—but she’ll need every ounce of that ferocity to survive captivity in the cruel Fae court.

Trapped as a servant in the faeries’ underground kingdom of Mistei, Kenna must help her new mistress undertake six deadly trials, one for each branch of magic: Fire, Earth, Light, Void, Illusion, and Blood. If she succeeds, her mistress will gain immortality and become the heir to Earth House. If she doesn’t, the punishment is death—for both mistress and servant.

With no ally but a sentient dagger of mysterious origins, Kenna must face monsters, magic, and grueling physical tests. But worse dangers wait underground, and soon Kenna gets caught up in a secret rebellion against the inventively sadistic faerie king. When her feelings for the rebellion’s leader turn passionate, Kenna must decide if she’s willing to risk her life for a better world and a chance at happiness.

Surviving the trials and overthrowing a tyrant king will take cunning, courage, and an iron will... but even that may not be enough.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sarah Hawley is the author of A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon and A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch. She has a master's degree in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

The winter solstice crept in cold, wet, and heavy with dread.

I looked out at the predawn darkness, tracing my finger over the frosted patterns that coated the exterior of the window. A wintry draft slithered through the gap where the wooden frame had warped with age. As the wind surged outside, a spray of icy rain smacked against the glass.

Another drop of frigid water splatted on my forehead. I yelped, then scowled up at the roof. This leak was new-I'd already been awoken unpleasantly by the one that had formed directly over my mattress during the night-and it was just one more sign of everything wrong in my life. I wouldn't have the money to replace the thatching for a long time, if ever, so I grabbed a bucket and put it under the leak. Soon I wouldn't need to go to the well for my water anymore.

As I straightened, a glow through the window caught my eye. In the distance, a golden faerie light shivered through the darkness. Its path was uneven, made more so by the warped glass. As I watched it move, my chest tightened with worry.

The winter solstice wasn't just the shortest day of the year; it was the day the Fae took yet another thing from humans. A faith that yielded no rewards, prayers that met uncaring ears, a legendary history that had decayed into this disappointing reality . . . We gave the faeries our hopes, and for what? Silence and far-off lights that led nowhere.

And now the Fae-or at least our naïve belief in them-would steal the lives of four young women.

"You don't deserve any of it," I whispered as I watched the drifting orb.

My mother would have chastised me for the blasphemous words. Only the luckiest and most worthy humans are chosen to join the Fae, she'd told me eighteen years ago as she unsnarled the tangles in my hair with a wooden comb. It had been another winter solstice morning-a sacrifice year, like this one-and I'd been just shy of turning seven. Those women are favored above all other mortals, and they live out the rest of their lives in splendor in Mistei, the faeries' kingdom under the ground.

There was longing in her voice whenever she'd told me that story. She hadn't been chosen for the Fae during the solstice ritual when she came of age. Life had pushed a different fate on her, and there I was as the result: a ragged child held in her equally threadbare embrace, my father long gone and rain dripping through the roof onto the packed earth floor of our hut. Still, she'd passed the fables on to me, as if through hearing them maybe I'd one day be granted the blessings life had denied her.

I didn't believe in blessings anymore.

Another drop plinked into the bucket. I made a rude hand gesture at the distant will-o'-the-wisp, then turned my back on it and began my preparations for the day.

The washbasin still held leftover water from the previous night. I splashed it onto my face, gasping at the shock of cold. Then I scrubbed my teeth and changed my nightdress for a loose shirt and trousers. The day would be a busy one-it was not only a sacrifice year but the first time I'd be eligible-but I didn't want to miss my favorite morning ritual.

The one-room hut was dark, but I knew the layout by heart. I stepped around the small table and two mismatched chairs that served as a sitting area, making my way to the scarred wooden table by the hearth. Bundles of herbs hung overhead, along with a few withered onions. Anya had given me some cheese the last time we'd gone for a walk together, so I cut off a piece and shoved it in my mouth before grabbing my cloak and heading outside.

The rain had thankfully stopped, but the mossy ground was slick and rimed with overnight frost. The snows would come soon, but we were still in the first month of winter, with its glittering mornings and spats of icy rain. As I rounded the corner of the hut, the wind grabbed at my messy braid, trying to rip the brown curls loose.

The sky was purpling to the east, the blackness of night slipping away. The wood-and-stone buildings and thatched roofs of Tumbledown stood against the lightening sky like crooked teeth, and smoke began drifting from chimneys as the town woke.

The town wasn't my aim, though. My mornings were dedicated to the bog.

Enterra was curved like an hourglass with a longer and wider lower part, and the bog banded the country like a lady's belt, with Tumbledown its buckle. Just north of my hut, the shrubbed land merged into a vast, glassy wet expanse dotted with low mounds of earth and plant matter. Thick fog sprawled across it, obscuring the far side where the land became faerie territory. Dozens of will-o'-the-wisps drifted through that fog, the floating orbs fading as dawn grew closer.

I watched the lights dim and go out one by one, and a familiar sadness settled alongside my lingering anxiety. On solstice mornings my mother's presence felt especially close. Her faith that she could become one of the Fae's favored ones had never faltered. Supposedly the Fae used to travel across the bog to trade with, seek entertainment from, or rain blessings down on humans-and occasionally abduct those they took a liking to-but now the eerie lights that drifted across the wetlands at night were the only sign they even existed.

Loving the Fae hadn't brought my mother any joy. Yet when she'd died eighteen months back, feverish and agonized, her last words had been for them: "Maybe now they will save me."

They hadn't, of course.

I filled my lungs with icy predawn air, willing my bitterness to wait a few hours. The morning was beautiful, and there were treasures to be found. When pink tinged the eastern sky, the last golden wisp disappeared, and I retrieved my net from a hollow log and wound my way out into the bog.

Most people were too afraid to come here. It was easy to get lost and drown; the ground between pools of water was deceptive, and more often than not what looked like solid earth was actually a pit of mud waiting to suck a traveler down. There were legends, too, of knuckers and other Nasties that lurked in the fens and wet places of the world, eager to rend the flesh of those who misstepped.

I'd spent my entire life at the edge of the bog, though, and I never misstepped-nor had I seen evidence of dragons under the water. It had been my haven for as long as I could remember, a place to be alone and free.

I took familiar twisting paths until a stretch of water blocked any further progress. Then I sat on a tussock of pale winter grass, my feet inches from a patch of clover that hid the edge of a pool, and dipped my net in.

"Fishing" was what my mother had called this odd habit of mine, though I privately thought of it as "collecting." My mother's stories had sparked my interest in the border between humans and the Fae, and the bog's secrets had been so tempting that I'd attached a net to a long wooden pole, determined to see what rested at the bottom.

As it turned out, any number of wonders were hidden in the muck and silt. Smooth skipping stones, carved talismans, even coins tossed in by lovers who braved the treacherous paths to prove their courage and commitment to each other. They wished on coppers, hoping the Fae would bless their union. The Fae didn't care, but I certainly blessed them for it. I'd even found what I thought were faerie artifacts before-pieces of faceted glass or strange twists of bright metal. I'd run my fingers over the objects, thinking about who might have crafted them in the distant past and what their purpose had been. Letting the wonder of my mother's stories slip back into me, if only for a few hours.

Something caught at my net, and I grunted as I jerked it free. The object that came up with the muck was brown and misshapen. "Please don't be something disgusting," I said under my breath as I tipped the blob out onto the...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593818369
ISBN 13 
9780593818367
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
481
Kontakt zum Hersteller
ACE
https://www.penguin.com/

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