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Lightmare (Volume 2) (The Incorruptibles) - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 2: The Incorruptibles

Magaziner, Lauren

 
9781665968690: Lightmare (Volume 2) (The Incorruptibles)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1665968699 ISBN 13: 9781665968690
Verlag: Aladdin, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Fiora struggles to do the right thing when faced with impossible odds in this “action-packed” (Kirkus Reviews) second book in the exciting upper middle grade fantasy series The Incorruptibles, for fans of Keeper of the Lost Cities and The Marvellers.

Still reeling from recent tragedies, Fiora and her Thistle teammates are on the run and living in seclusion. Times are difficult, and they are more vulnerable to the sorcerer threat than ever. But all is not lost. The Thistles are forming a plan to fight back.

But when terrible truths are revealed, deep fractures form within the team. When one of their own makes a choice Fiora never saw coming—and cannot possibly understand—Fiora and her friends are forced to reexamine what is good and what is evil…as well as the gray space in between.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lauren Magaziner grew up in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where she spent her childhood with her nose in a book and her fingers curled over a keyboard. Lauren studied creative writing and philosophy at Hamilton College. She wrote her debut novel, The Only Thing Worse Than Witches, while studying abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland, her junior year. In addition to writing a book in Scotland, Lauren also herded sheep, attended a royal wedding, witnessed a waddling parade of penguins, spotted the Loch Ness monster, and stuck her face in a fairy river of eternal youth. After college, Lauren worked on two delightful Scholastic magazines, where many of her coworkers didn’t believe her last name was real. She lived in Brooklyn, New York, for six years. She currently resides in Philadelphia, where she writes full time.

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Chapter One CHAPTER ONE
It was Fiora’s turn to keep watch, and she was struggling to stay awake. But it wasn’t like anyone else had volunteered to take the four a.m. shift. Fiora was all alone, stationed on a hill that gave her good visibility of the Deserts’ arid landscape, while the Thistles, Baz, and Leo were sleeping some distance away in their designated campsite, hidden from view.

Not that anyone was viewing them in the middle of nowhere. The whole region was barren.

Fiora found the Deserts surprisingly chilly at night. Her nose ran from the cold. She kept wiping it on her sleeve, trying not to think about the warm fire that had once burned in the Thistle cottage, or the hot chocolate that used to be in the mess hall, or the woolen hats that Imogen had knitted her in the winter.

Stop it, Fiora scolded herself. Don’t think about it.

Whenever she thought of Inc Academy, her throat got tight and scratchy. Was it homesickness, grief, guilt, or fury? She could never tell. The feelings snarled together like tangled spools of thread.

It had only been a few weeks since they’d fled the academy, but it felt like a lifetime. She missed everything about it—the smells, the sounds, the sights, even the food in the mess hall after the Actons had lost their funding. She’d take their chicken gizzards any day over the dry, stale crackers that Quinn was rationing.

No, stop. She had to focus on the task at hand. The others were trusting her to be their eyes while they slept.

Fiora adjusted her moonglasses, a tool that Captain Quinn had stolen from the tech lab the day they’d all fled the academy. The moonglasses were one of the more useful gadgets Quinn had pocketed. They were, essentially, sunglasses made for nighttime that allowed Fiora to see clearly in the dark. But they weren’t perfect; every fifteen minutes or so, the glasses went black and needed a minute to reboot. Since Quinn had found them in the tech lab—and not the tools locker—the glasses were technically still in development, unfit for the field.

Fugitives can’t be choosers, Fiora reminded herself as the moonglasses flickered off again. She pulled them from her face and squinted in the dark. Then she shivered violently and cursed the Deserts with every chatter of her teeth.

If she’d had her way, Fiora would have picked the Forests, where there was more shelter, or the Temperates, where the weather was better. But Quinn had pulled rank and insisted on the Deserts.

“Trust me,” Quinn had said once Inc Academy was a speck behind them, “I spent almost a decade in the field, and there’s no place emptier. No pockets of small sorcerer towns, and it’s far enough away from the Big Four territories.”

“The Astors and the Paynes are both in the Deserts,” Onyx had reminded her.

“No, the Paynes are too far south for where I’m thinking. I suppose the closest Big Four territory is the Astor Quadrant, but the Astors don’t venture outside their gaudy city, so we won’t have to worry about them, violent as they are. I promise—the Deserts are the best spot to hide. At least until our, um, untimely exit blows over.”

“Oh, I don’t think it will ever blow over,” Onyx had said mournfully. “The academy is dead, we stole Inc inventions, and we joined forces with Baz and Leo—known sorcerers. We’re outlaws now.”

“Don’t worry,” Cameron had replied. “The other Incs will come around once we break the Dark Deals—they have to.” Classic Cameron optimism, and no one had the heart to shut him down.

The moonglasses booted back up, and Fiora quickly put them on again. No signs of movement. Nothing at all except hills of red rock, cacti, and a surprising number of desert shrubs. But none of those triggered a flashing “movement detected” alert within her field of vision.

Not even animals sounded the alarm with the glasses, and Fiora had learned that the hard way, after a particularly meaty spider had crawled up her arm during one of her first nighttime shifts. When the tarantula reached her neck, she’d screamed loud enough to summon every sorcerer in a ten-mile radius. (But thankfully, there were none.)

After that Fiora began fretting about Ringer. Would the moonglasses detect the sorcerer if they shape-shifted into an animal? Her nightmares were full of Ringer in different forms: a Ringer snake, a Ringer hawk, a Ringer cougar, a Ringer scorpion…

But Quinn didn’t seem concerned when Fiora eventually brought it up. “Ringer wouldn’t attack all seven of us,” Quinn had said with a shrug. “And there’s no way the whole Radiance could approach without us seeing.”

“But what if—”

“And,” Quinn added, “if they tried to execute a harebrained scheme like that anyway, then we would jump into the buggies and fly away.”

“But, Quinn—”

“Don’t worry, Fiora. I’ll protect you. Worst-case scenario? I’d fight the Radiance while you six escape. It’s what captains do.”

But it didn’t make Fiora feel any better that Quinn was imagining scenarios where she was left behind to die.

Fiora rubbed her hands together. “I can’t lose anyone else,” she whispered into the night air, feeling the familiar pit in her stomach when she thought about Captain Silvius. There one minute, gone the next. And as much as she wanted to believe that he was watching over them and that he was at peace now—like Cameron, Onyx, Baz, and Leo said—the triad gods were not part of Fiora’s faith. Her religion was not as gentle about death. She’d grown up understanding that nothing came next. And the cold, hard truth of the matter was that Fiora had seen the anguished expression on Silvius’s face as life left his body, and she knew that there was nothing peaceful about dying.

Whenever Fiora thought about her own parents’ deaths, she felt fury toward the nameless sorcerer who had killed them. The only emotion greater than her anger was her sorrow, knowing that she’d never again get to talk to her mom or dad—or hear them or hug them or have them—for the rest of her life.

Her eyes wandered up to the stars. When her parents had perished, Fiora had recently been dropped off at Uncle Randal’s tailor shop. She’d been six years old. It wasn’t her fault.

But with Captain Silvius?

As Fiora took in the infinite sky, her breath hitched. How was she supposed to carry the burden of knowing that she was partially responsible for his fate? She could have been stronger, faster, better on the field. If only she hadn’t needed his help… If only she’d been able to cover him when he’d explicitly asked for her protection.

Fiora replayed the moments repeatedly in her mind. She hated every decision she’d made at the Rainfall Ball three weeks ago—and every action long before the ball too. If she had been smarter, then she would have uncovered Heath as the spy earlier, and the whole night would have been prevented.

But there was no redo. There was only regret.

Captain Silvius haunted her every quiet thought. The worst thing was knowing that Quinn was thinking about him too. But they hadn’t talked about it. They couldn’t talk about it. Whenever anyone broached the subject of the Rainfall Ball, Quinn completely powered down, like an electro-pulse shield that had run out...

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Verlag
Aladdin
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1665968699
ISBN 13 
9781665968690
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Libri GmbH
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
Hessen
Deutschland