The WarMage of Arkley 3

About the Book

There’s a version of this story where, to end it, I do what I’ve always done. Where I call up the sky-burning thunder, put the Big Bad down, and then joke about it over a coffee before the school run.

But this won’t be that.

I came to Arkley to disappear, and for a while it even worked: my daughter was happy, I had a nice life, and a family I never went looking for. But then the rusted crown came up out of the sea and I learned the one lesson I can’t joke my way out of. Every scrap of the old power I reach for only tears the door wider for what’s coming through it.

So I can’t win this the way I won all the rest of my wars. I can’t burn it with Citadel fire. And I can’t stop it with the sword that ended pantheons. The lock on the world sits under my own house, and the only key that turns it is the one small person I swore the dark would never have.

And I still have to get her to school.

So it comes down to what’s left. A teacher who knows how to reload. A bear that bakes and is older than the deep woods. And a shapeshifting babysitter done pretending she only comes round for the kid. My Edie. And a WarMage about to find out whether the strongest thing he ever had was the power he buried or the people he buried it for.

It all comes down to the one door. And nowhere left to run.