The peace was always a lie. They just didn’t know whose.
Queen Eloise of Ardanthia has done everything right. She
negotiated the alliance with Caladorn, married the prince, held her court
together through blight and borderland attacks and the whispered threat of an
ancient secret order. Now, with villages vanishing overnight — crops blackened,
livestock dead, people simply gone — she does what any good
ruler would do. She sends her best.
Sir Cedric Blackthorn, the precise and principled
knight-investigator. Captain Elira, a soldier who has survived too much to
flinch at anything. Tomas, a scholar more at home with footnotes than
fistfights. Ryn, a street thief from the Saltspire docks whose instincts are
worth more than anyone’s education. And Auralias — the Court Mage, brilliant
and unsettling in equal measure — who brings knowledge of old magic that none
of the others possess, and who may be the only thing standing between Ardanthia
and the League of the Moon.
Together, they are hunting the League before the League can
finish what it started.
What they find will change everything they think they know —
about the attacks, the conspiracy, and the true scale of what is being
assembled in the dark. There are artifacts, older than any living kingdom,
whose power was thought lost to history. There are secrets buried so deep that
uncovering them will cost more than anyone is prepared to pay. And there is a
question, growing louder with every mile: who, exactly, is the enemy?
Twilight’s Dominion is a story about loyalty
tested to breaking, courts where every smile hides a calculation, and the
particular horror of realising that the enemy has been in the room all along.
It is about a queen learning that the peace she built was built for her
— and a company of mismatched, battle-worn companions who keep fighting even
after the ground gives way beneath them.
Set across mountain fortresses carved from living rock,
fog-wrapped port cities, a besieged royal palace, and the treacherous corridors
of two kingdoms in collision, this is epic fantasy for readers who like their
politics sharp, their magic consequential, and their betrayals earned.
Perfect for readers
who love:
*The
political intrigue of A Song of Ice and Fire
*The
ensemble loyalty of The Lies of Locke Lamora
*The
world-building depth of Robin Hobb
*Characters
who are competent, scarred, and worth caring about
“There’s no certainty in what’s ahead. But I’d
rather die among friends than watch the world go to monsters.”
The Broken Crown
Saga:
Book One: The King’s Fall
Book Two: Twilight’s Dominion
Book Three: Echoes of Kings – coming soon
Amazon * Apple
* B&N
* Kobo * Smashwords * Books2Read * Bookbub
* Goodreads
Twilight’s
Dominion opens on two stories running in parallel. In the first, Lady Seraphina
D’Argent — a diplomat travelling alone through the unforgiving Crownspine
mountains — has just been surrounded by armed strangers on a mountain pass. She
has been riding for ten weeks on orders she doesn’t fully understand, heading
toward coordinates her queen gave her without explanation. She is about to
discover something that will change everything she thought she knew about the
world she serves.
~820 words
The figures came on in absolute silence,
fanning out across the trail with the efficiency of wolves. In a matter of
seconds they had closed off her retreat and were sliding, almost bonelessly,
down the talus to encircle her.
Their leader wore a helm that entirely
concealed his face, its visor painted with a crude snarl of animal fangs. The
others carried composite bows at the ready, arrows nocked, but pointed down — a
gesture that managed to be both merciful and contemptuous at once. Seraphina
drew Cassia to a halt and set her hands openly on the pommel, every muscle
rigid with calculation.
“State your business,” the leader
growled, voice rendered inhuman by the tin of his visor.
Seraphina debated, for perhaps two breaths,
whether to attempt bluff or bravado. The bows decided the matter. “I am
Lady Seraphina D’Argent, of Armathor,” she replied, “on a mission
from Her Majesty Queen Evelina.”
The leader turned, a lazy gesture that made
mockery of her authority, and a snort went up among his lieutenants. “And
your escort?”
“Was not permitted.” Seraphina kept
her gaze level, though the blood pounded furiously in her ears. “I am to
meet with a representative of the Riders, if you are such.”
The mention of the Riders produced a shift in
the circle. The archers exchanged glances, some wary, some almost amused. The
leader drew closer, boots crushing the shallow crust of snow.
“You speak too much for a courier,”
he observed. “But too little for a spy.” He swept a gauntleted hand
at her pack horse. “Open your satchel.”
She untied the travel case from the gelding,
working fingers gone numb in the cold, and fished out the scroll tube. It was
heavy, made of dark wood and brass, the wax seal untouched. She held it up so
they could all see the sigil of Caladorn: a pair of crossed sabres over a
seven-pointed star. There was a stillness, then a slow, careful release of
tension among the archers as the leader nodded, almost respectful.
“Walk forward. Slowly,” he said.
They escorted her up the ridge, off the
trail, through a section of scree so loose that even Cassia balked. For an
hour, maybe more, they wound through impossible switchbacks and across narrow
spines of rock, each step a new exercise in balance and terror. Finally, the
leader raised his hand and the party halted at a narrow saddle between peaks.
Seraphina caught her breath, took a long
swallow from her water skin, and paused as she noticed what lay beyond the
saddle.
The city was carved into the living stone of
the mountain’s interior, hidden from the world by both geometry and design.
Terraced galleries spiralled down the inside face of a gigantic crater, studded
with windows and fire-gleaming vents that gave the place an eerie, hive-like
vibrance. Slender bridges of bone-white stone spanned the void between rocky
spurs, connecting to massive towers whose roofs gaped open to the sky. Far
below, at the crater’s deepest point, a plaza of blue granite caught the light
of a hundred lanterns, transforming it into a pool of shimmering stars.
She had never seen such a thing. She had
never heard of such a thing. And yet, as she stood there, wind plucking at her
cloak, Seraphina understood instantly, with a sick clarity, that Queen Evelina
had always known.
They did not take her down the public steps.
Instead, the archers led her along a narrow spiral cut into the stone,
half-tunnel, half-balcony, with just enough space for one person and a horse at
a time. The air grew colder with every turn, and the hum of unseen machinery —
bellows, pulleys, some kind of water-driven elevator — echoed from deep within
the walls. At last they emerged onto a flagstoned platform where the leader,
visor now up, gestured for her to dismount.
“Wait here,” he said, less
threatening now. “You will be summoned.”
Seraphina did not ask how long. She
untethered her gloves, flexed her hands, and tried not to shiver in the thin
mountain air. The view from the platform was staggering; across the chasm, the
terraces of the city glimmered with what looked like glass or ice, and tiny
figures moved between the arcades.
A boy in a grey tunic arrived, bearing a tray
of tea and something that looked like bread but tasted of cedar and salt. He
smiled at her with a gentleness that belonged to another world. When she asked
him his name, he merely gestured for her to drink.
Time stretched, then snapped back when the
leader returned, flanked by two more guards in matching visors. “You will
come,” he said.
I am a new author writing under the pen name Orlan Drake, my
real name is Chris Hills Farrow. I’ve
worked as a freelance writer for magazines in the past but have always wanted
to write fiction, and after having more free time during the lockdowns, I have
made some progress. I enjoy fantasy because it opens my mind to other worlds or
ways of life that do not exist in real life, or have ever existed.
