Lady of Darkness

Kill one stranger, and learn who ordered your mother's death

Scarlett wakes from a dream of vengeance — the night she and her two sisters, the Wraiths of Death, tortured the Fae assassin who murdered her mother.

Kill one stranger, and learn who ordered your mother's death

Scarlett wakes from a dream of vengeance — the night she and her two sisters, the Wraiths of Death, tortured the Fae assassin who murdered her mother. They took him apart, but he never revealed who hired him. Now Scarlett is nineteen and exiled to the Tyndell Manor, her lethal skills rusting under propriety — punishment for defying the Assassin Lord who raised her in the Black Syndicate. When her sister Nuri brings his offer, everything shifts: complete one kill, and he'll help Scarlett find and destroy whoever ordered the murder. She accepts despite the unknown target and unexplained motive. She'll need training — combat skills rust without use. What she doesn't know is that the man she's been ordered to kill is already at the manor, training elite soldiers under a false name.

A mysterious captain catches Scarlett's blade and her curiosity

A golden-eyed soldier lingers in the training barracks after Scarlett spars with Cassius, her closest companion and personal guard since childhood. When she demands the stranger identify himself, he smirks. She hurls a dagger at his face. He steps aside and catches it by the handle, a breath from his ear. Introduced as Captain Renwell, a trainer of elite soldiers, he defeats her in their first match in under two minutes. Scarlett challenges him again — wagering that if she wins, he trains her. She fights without restraint, but he backs her against a wall. Then his gaze fixes on her mother's ring: an owl above a gold flame set into sapphire. Something shifts behind those eyes. He releases her and agrees. The ring, not her skill, changed his mind.

Scarlett trails him into the woods and finds a Fae Queen waiting Weeks of grueling training build cautious intimacy, sealed by a nightly bargain of exchanged truths. When the captain claims Scarlett's book is written in a foreign language invisible to others, she trails him into the forest. There she watches him bow to a woman flanked by a massive black wolf — a woman who wields wind and sand, magic that shouldn't exist in mortal lands. She calls him Sorin and demands he return a ring. Scarlett confronts him afterward. His real name is Sorin Aditya. He's from the Fire Court of the Fae lands, sent to find a weapon that could free his oppressed people. They ride home sharing a horse, her back against his chest. When Scarlett…