Samantha Shannon

The stunning, standalone prequel to the New York Times bestselling “The Priory of the Orange Tree”.

Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms – but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose.

To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow – exactly where she wants to be.

The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate.

When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.

Intricate and epic, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the world of “A Priory of the Orange Tree”, showing us a course of events that shaped it for generations to come.

A Day of Fallen Night

'If he ever offends you again, I shall take my axe, sail back to Inys, and bury it in his thick skull.’

That made her laugh. 'I don't think you can do that now, Papa,’ she said. He pulled a face. 'A king must keep the peace.'

He kissed her forehead. ‘What peace can there be if my own daughter is unhappy?'

‘Until then, daughter, I bid you mind my heart. I leave half of it in your keeping.’

Its glow haunted his countenance, so the glass reflected it, and his features were cast over the trees, giving then eyes. He looked at the haithwood, and the haithwood looked back. Blind and all-seeing. Soulless and eternal and alive.

Rachel Livingston

Florell guided her back to the bolsters and stroked her damp hair. Queen Sabran had sometimes done the same, when Glorian was still young enough to lose her teeth. Those memories glinted, bright and distant - coins spent in a well, sunk too deep to pluck back out.

"In Hróth, they say the oldest stories have the deepest roots."

"The Saint made a new Kingdom in Inys because the old was too twisted to save. The old world is all round us, Wulf," Karlsten said. "Stealing out of dark places, waiting for us to let it in."

Inys had been built on strangeness and wild things. Surely they must steal through the foundations, like weeds between cobblestones. 

"Deep forests always invite strangeness, whether real or imagined."

"When the world is awry, some find comfort in the old ways."

The sky was black, studded with tiny cloves of star. It was customary to hold entombments just before dawn, so the dead could follow the sun as it climbed to the heavenly court. 

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