Duskbound

Fia once clung to shadows as a form of survival—preserved but stagnant, like a flower pressed between pages.

Fia once clung to shadows as a form of survival—preserved but stagnant, like a flower pressed between pages. Laryk had torn her free and flung her into a transforming current, one that stripped away old layers and shaped something that could exist in the light. Being seen, truly seen, turned out not to be the annihilation she'd always feared. It was revelation. Love filled her with a power that had always felt like a curse, and she abandoned darkness in favor of the sun. She turned her back on shadows completely, certain they belonged to her past. She never imagined they would return to claim her.

A failed escape earns solitary confinement before Vexa breaks through

After being captured at the ball in Emeraal, Fia spends six weeks locked in an obsidian tower in Ravenfell, capital of Umbrathia. Her first escape attempt—mind-controlling a chatty Umbra soldier named Effie and commanding her to walk out the door—ends when Aether, the golden-eyed warrior who seized her, slings Fia over his shoulder and carries her back. He isolates her completely. No visitors, no conversation—just meals slid under the door and the suffocating awareness of his mind glowing golden whenever she reaches out with her focus. When a dagger-wielding soldier named Vexa finally arrives, armed with blunt pragmatism, she coaxes Fia's name from her lips for the first time. The reward: walks to the stables, fresh air, and the slow beginning of a very cautious trust.

Aether's shadows confirm what a winged beast already sensed

Vexa explains that Duskbound are true shadow-wielders who can share darkness with vessels—Kalfar marked by void burns from surviving the Void, a mass of ancient darkness in the North. Fia insists she's Aossí, not Kalfar, but everything shifts when Aether forces shadows into her on the fortress lawn. The darkness doesn't destroy her—it settles into her bones like something that was always meant to be there. Before she can process this, a massive silver Vördr—a winged beast that hasn't accepted a rider in half a century—descends from the sky and lands between her and Aether. It bows. Aether names the creature Tryggar and tells her it has just claimed her. Even the beasts of this realm recognize what Fia cannot yet accept about herself.

Children gasp for breath in a realm drained by Fia's homeland Vexa and Aether walk Fia through Ravenfell's gates into streets choked with refugees. Merchants sell only grain and scraps. A desperate woman begs for a medic visit for her dying husband—healers can only come every two weeks because their tethers are too weakened by the failing…