Our dark

The sequel to V.E. Schwab’s #1 New York Times bestseller This Savage Song is a tale of a broken world where violent acts breed monsters.

Kate Harker hit the ground running. Blood dripped from a shallow cut on her calf, and her lungs were sore from the blow she’d taken to the chest. Thank God for armor, even if it was makeshift. “Turn right.” Her boots slid on the slick pavement as she rounded the corner onto a side street. She swore when she saw it was full of people, restaurant canopies up and tables out despite the brewing storm. Teo’s voice rose in her ear. “It’s catching up.” Kate backtracked and took off down the main road. “If you don’t want a mass casualty event, find me somewhere else.”

“Half a block, then cut right,” said Bea, and Kate felt like the avatar in some multiplayer game where a girl was chased by monsters through a massive city. Only this massive city was real – the capital at the heart of Prosperity – and so were the monsters. Well, monster. She’d taken out one, but a second was heading her way.

The shadows wicked around her as she ran. A chill twisted through the damp night and fat drops of rain dripped under her collar and down her back.

“Left up ahead,” instructed Bea, and Kate bolted past a row of shops and down an alley, leaving a trail of fear and blood like bread crumbs in her wake. She reached a narrow lot and a wall, only it wasn’t a wall, but a warehouse door, and for a split second she was back in the abandoned building in the Waste, cuffed to a bar in a blacked-out room while somewhere beyond the door, metal struck bone and someone— “Left.” Kate blinked the memory away as Bea repeated her instruction. But she was sick of running, and the door was ajar, so she went straight, out of the rain and into the vacant space.

There were no windows in the warehouse, no light at all save that from the street behind her, which reached only a few feet – the rest of the steel structure was plunged into solid black. Kate’s pulse pounded in her head as she cracked a glorified glow stick – Liam’s idea – and tossed it into the shadows, flooding the warehouse with steady white light.

“Kate...,” chimed in Riley for the first time. “Be careful.”

She snorted. Count on Riley to give useless advice. She scanned the warehouse, spotted crates piled within reach of the steel rafters overhead, and started to climb, hauling herself the last of the way up just as the door rattled on its hinges. Kate froze. She held her breath as fingers – not flesh and bone, but something else – curled around the door and slid it open. Static sounded in her good ear. “Status?” asked Liam nervously.

“Busy,” she hissed, balancing on the rafters as the monster filled the doorway, and for an instant, Kate imagined Sloan’s red eyes, his shining fangs, his dark suit.

Come out, little Katherine, he’d say. Let’s play a game.

The sweat on her skin chilled, but it was just her mind playing tricks on her – the creature edging forward into the warehouse wasn’t a Malchai. It was something else entirely.

It had a Malchai’s red eyes, yes, and a Corsai’s sharp claws, but its skin was the bluish black of a rotting corpse, and it wasn’t after flesh or blood. It fed on hearts. Kate didn’t know why she’d assumed the monsters would be the same. Verity had its triad, but here she had only come across a single kind. So far. Then again, Verity boasted the highest crime rate of all ten territories – thanks in large part, she was sure, to her father – while Prosperity’s sins were harder to place. On the books, Prosperity was the wealthiest territory by half,

The war between monsters and humans rages on. August Flynn has become the leader he never wanted to be. And as for Kate…