Once a servant, now a princess, a young woman thrust into power challenges everything about the underground Fae realm in the spellbinding sequel to Sarah Hawley s USA Today bestseller Servant of Earth.

Kenna Heron is still reeling from her lover s betrayal and the threat of an impending civil war. With only a sentient dagger and her two closest and most powerless friends by her side, she must navigate the treacherous politics of Mistei while coming to terms with her new identity as not just Fae, but princess of the reborn Blood House.

With the corrupt king dead at last, three candidates are vying for the crown: a princess who claims the throne as her birthright and two rebel princes, both of whom are courting Kenna s support to break the stalemate between them. Old loyalties fray as new, volatile alliances form, and Kenna finds herself caught in a web of violence and deceit and swept up in a forbidden romance as passionate as it is dangerous.

Kenna has the power to shape Mistei s future but someone s willing to kill to make sure she never gets the chance.

Autorentext
Sarah Hawley is the author of Servant of Earth, A Witch s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon, A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch, and A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire. She has a master's degree in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats.

Leseprobe
1

The Blood Tree rose before me, tall and impossibly ancient. Its branches had been bare the last time I'd been in the vast stone chamber leading to Blood House-during the immortality trials, when the tree had shown me a lifetime of my sins-but now they were covered with crimson leaves. The stone tiles beneath my feet felt alive. Power thrummed through the chamber, an invisible current that brushed against a strange new inner sense.

I shivered at the sensation, just one sign of the tremendous and frightening change I'd undergone.

I wasn't human any longer.

I was a faerie-and the new leader of Blood House.

Welcome, Princess Kenna, a voice whispered inside my head. Liquid, female, throbbing like a pulse.

"How do we get inside?" These words were spoken out loud, and I turned my head to look at the speaker. Lara, my former mistress and the excommunicated heir to Earth House, looked as exhausted as she sounded. Like me, she had one arm around a drooping, distant-eyed woman with a shaved head and skin newly lined with scars: Anya Hayes, my best friend from the human world, who I'd thought dead until a few hours ago. She'd been unresponsive but capable of walking when we'd left the corpse-filled throne room, but she'd sagged more with every step. Now she seemed barely conscious.

My chest hurt unbearably as I looked at them. The three of us had survived months of danger and a night of carnage, but at what cost? Lara had been stripped of her magic, her family, and her home; Anya had been tortured in unimaginable ways.

"I'm not sure yet," I told Lara. "I need to figure out what the trap is."

All six Fae houses in the underground city of Mistei had dangerous traps at their entrances. They were tests only house faeries could pass, while intruders were killed gruesomely. Fire House burned unwelcome visitors with a curtain of flame, Earth House drowned them in a tunnel of water . . . What would the faeries of Blood House, who could magically manipulate bodies, have done to keep their borders safe?

They were my borders now, I supposed. The entirety of Blood House had been massacred five hundred years ago by King Osric, but now Osric was dead and the house had been resurrected in the form of . . . me. Just me. The six Sacred Shards that had brought magic to this world had gifted me with immortality and magic, and in exchange, I was supposed to "restore the balance." Whatever that meant. However one person could possibly do that.

My gaze ran over the entrance hall. The checkered black-and-white stone tiles were etched with the faces of monsters, and the gray walls were carved with beings of all types, too: Noble Fae, Underfae, and the dark, twisted Nasties that inhabited the lowest levels of Mistei. The Blood Tree dominated the chamber, reaching its gnarled limbs towards the distant ceiling, and beyond it was an enormous silver door covered in spikes.

I wondered if the Blood Shard was listening to my thoughts, since it had spoken in my head in that dark, welcoming voice. Any help? I thought towards the room in general. A hint on what the trap is?

The Shard didn't respond, but a coil of metal around my bicep did. Caedo-my bloodthirsty, shape-shifting dagger-was currently in the form of a spiraling armband, but it writhed like a serpent beneath my sleeve and sank sharp teeth into me.

I yelped in surprise, looking down at my arm. "Was that necessary?"

"What?" Lara asked, sounding confused.

Caedo nipped me again. You wanted a hint, the dagger said, its voice metallic and genderless in my head.

I eyed the projections on the door. If Caedo could drain a body in seconds, it made sense the house entrance could as well. Now I needed to figure out how to get it to not kill my friends.

"Can you hold Anya?" I asked Lara. My arm should have been aching from supporting her for this long, but I didn't feel the physical exhaustion I wo