Silver Under Nightfall: Silver Under Nightfall #1 - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: Reaper

Chupeco, Rin

 
9781982195724: Silver Under Nightfall: Silver Under Nightfall #1
Softcover
ISBN 10: 198219572X ISBN 13: 9781982195724
Verlag: Saga Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Full of court intrigue, queer romance, and terrifying monsters—this “deliciously fun” (Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches) epic fantasy appeals to fans of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree and the adult animated series Castlevania.

Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.

It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.

But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rin Chupeco is a nonbinary Chinese Filipino writer born and raised in the Philippines. They are the author of Silver Under Nightfall and several speculative young adult series, including The Bone Witch, The Girl from the Well, The Never-Tilting World, and Wicked as You Wish. Formerly a graphic designer and technical writer, they now write fiction full time and live with their partner and two children in Manila. They can be found on Instagram at @RinChupeco.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: The Forest of Fangs Chapter 1 THE FOREST OF FANGS
They never tell you it’s the girls that are hardest to kill.

He would’ve liked nothing more than to forget every ball he’d ever been forced to attend, but the mind is a funny bastard, one he’d trained to retain information on the off chance it could save his life. And so he remembered. He remembered her.

First-year debutantes tended to flee from him once the introductions were over, which was only a shade politer than those in their second and third years, who needn’t bother speaking to him at all. But she was sixteen years old and a willowy little thing, all dolled up in pink lace; stammering and nervous at first, but braver than she let on. She’d stayed and smiled and talked to him like he wasn’t a pariah among the aristocracy, like she wasn’t risking her reputation over a conversation with him. She had lovely green eyes and smelled like jasmine.

She’d called him Armiger; not Lord or Lady, but a neutral title he felt was more in keeping with who he was. She hadn’t mocked him like so many others had.

The bar for empathy was on the ground as far as the nobility was concerned, but when you were used to eating dirt, being thrown a bone felt like kindness.

And so it had hurt, in an unexpected, bewildering way, when he’d received the order to execute her.

Like most of the damned, she was beautiful. She’d always been breathtaking, but death had a curious way of remolding her features, shaping them into an artificial perfection that mere mortals could never reach. He was reminded of his old school lessons; of chameleons who changed their colors for camouflage, of butterflies that mimicked flowers for their own protection.

But Lady Daneira’s preternatural beauty was not for her protection. Lady Daneira’s beauty was bait.

She stood in the small clearing with moonlight threading through the dark tresses of her hair, braiding it in softer shades of light. Her small, white fingers trembled as she undid the laces of her gown, deliberate in their clumsiness.

“Come to me,” she crooned.

He approached her. His eyes were not on her face, nor were they on her now-exposed bodice. They were on her lips, which were stained in a scarlet hue darker than any rouge could achieve. She smiled at him then, and he could almost—almost—see traces of the girl she once was, even as her arms wound themselves around his neck, her breath light against the base of his throat.

“Please,” she whispered, and her mouth opened—wide.

She was quick, but he was quicker.

She shoved him away with a screech and stumbled back as blood pooled down her chin. He’d stabbed a wooden stake right through the flesh, exiting at the back of her head. She wrenched the weapon free, leaving an ugly, gaping hole between her upper cheek and lower jaw, injuries she ignored as she flung away the stake and focused on his face, her lips twisting and fangs protruding farther when she realized what he was.

“Reaper,” she snarled, and leaped.

She blurred from view, reappeared behind him, then disappeared again as he spun around until she was surrounding him from all sides simultaneously. A neat trick for someone only two weeks dead. He drew out Breaker from where it lay strapped across his back, the thick handle a bludgeon all on its own. His thumb moved across a hidden switch, and concealed twin scythe blades snapped outward at the farthest end like ram horns, curved downward and sharp.

She was too fast, though, and he was still mortal. The problem with carrying something that was essentially five weapons in one was that it weighed the sum of its parts.

Gauging a vampire’s movements with human eyes was pointless and often fatal. So he concentrated on his sixteen years of training—sixteen years of getting bled out and stabbed and maimed so badly that his sharpened senses could pinpoint exactly where she was about to attack based on which part of his body was already phantom-aching.

His left side throbbed. He turned to deflect, the steel slamming against fingernails that could tear through bark. She flickered away and came after him from a different direction, only to be frustrated once again.

“Why won’t you let me kill you?” she cried out as petulantly as a child. A vessel had been severed somewhere behind her right iris, and from that eye, blood cried down, hardened, and clotted.

He had no energy to spare for talking, and when she came at him a third time, he deflected the blow and mounted his first real offensive. She drew back to avoid the downward slash, Breaker’s edge missing her neck by a precious inch. Her wounds were ugly, buttered in a permanent splotch across her face, half of which was drenched in sticky, already congealing blood, but even confronted with this proof of her true nature, he hesitated.

If he’d been smart and staked her through the heart right from the beginning, as he’d done countless times to countless creatures of the night for countless other bounties, the fight would have already been over. Short, quick, brutal was the basic tenet of Reaper training.

But he’d never been known for his intelligence. The three days spent hunting down Lady Daneira had been three days of hoping not to find her. That the witnesses were mistaken. That it was some other corpse they’d seen haunting Tennyfair lands. That it wasn’t someone he’d known, however brief the acquaintance and however light her jasmine scent.

He could almost hear his father now. You’ve always been a soft-hearted fool, Son. You got that from your mother.

Lady Daneira was freshly turned, but still a freshly turned novice, even if that made her a thousand times deadlier than the average fighter. She wasn’t used to her food fighting back so early in her undead life, and her untethered rage at his rejection left her open to reprisal. In that moment, staring down at her mad, lovely eyes, he accepted that she was lost. Drawing out the battle would be the cruelest thing he could do.

So when she came after him again, he’d steeled his resolve, asked her quietly for forgiveness, and struck from below, altering the angle of his slash to catch her unaware.

He kept Breaker nice and sharp. As far as beheadings went, it was a clean one.

He dropped to his knees afterward, holding her. Her eyes were wide and staring, mouth slightly parted in shock. Her gaze fluttered to his, and in their depths he saw stray bits of humanity returning.

“Armiger Remy,” she whispered in newfound recognition. And then, one final time: “Please.”

Still cradling her head carefully against his arm, he reached over and picked up the discarded stake. Her eyes followed his movements as he crouched over her fallen body.

“I’m sorry.” The words always felt hollow, but he said them every time. She was lucid—they sometimes were, near the end, but never for long.

Now her smile was exactly as he remembered it. “Send me to heaven, Armiger.”

And this time, Remy didn’t hesitate.

He sat with her awhile. He’d never understood the point of administering final rites, mainly because he was shit at it. But undead or not, the Duke of Tennyfair had been adamant Remy bring his daughter’s body back...

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Verlag
Saga Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
198219572X
ISBN 13 
9781982195724
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
528
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
AA Utrecht
3584
Niederlande

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