Page 1 of Vale of Dreams

CHAPTER 1

No matter how many times I hear the roar of a dragon, it always fills me with bone-deep terror.

A dragon cry rips across the night sky. The sound rumbles down to my spine, and fear coils around my ribs, robbing me of breath. I shut my eyes, then exhale slowly and press my body to the cold concrete rooftop. On this mission deep in enemy territory, it’s hard to avoid the sound of dragon calls. Their ear-shattering bellows are the relentless requiem for the Second Fey War.

I glance at the dark sky over Bristol, my breath misting. A few snowflakes dance in the air, but it’s a moonless night, and I can’t see the dragon.

Through the magical conch in my ear, Serana sighs. “That was a loud one.”

“They’re all loud,” I mutter.

She’s somewhere on the streets below me, keeping to the shadows, avoiding the warm glow of the gas lamps. Fey soldiers are roaming around occupied Bristol, and we’re doing our best to avoid them. Even fully glamoured, we would draw suspicious stares, skulking in the shadows as we are.

Somewhere nearby, our soothsayer, Tana, is drinking in a pub. She has the best assignment of the night. She’s probably sitting by a fireplace, eating savory steak and ale pie.

The cold air nips at my fingers and cheeks. “Tana?” I whisper. “Anything in the tea leaves? It’s freezing out here.”

A second goes by before I hear a breezy murmur through the conch: “You can’t rush tea. It takes time to drink it. If I rush it, I’ll get a rushed reading,” she says. “One second.”

I fiddle with the conch in my ear, irritated by the ragged edges scraping my skin.

Inwardly, I curse the Fey—for ruining human technology, for invading France and England. For capturing Raphael and doing gods-know-what to him.

My Raphael, who once waited for days in the woods for a family that he never saw again. Raphael, who’d told me he was desperate for me the way a starving man craves fruit…

The thought of his sorrowful silver eyes makes my throat tighten. I miss him with a gnawing emptiness that makes it hard to think straight. I replay the final moment before the Fey captured him, mentally reviewing every detail. My thoughts spiral into obsession. I can’t stop trying to figure out what I did wrong, how I could have stopped it. The tiny moments and decisions that could have led to a better outcome.

What would the brutal Fey do to a high-ranking knight of Avalon Tower? I don’t want to think about it, and yet, the thought rings in my skull in an endless loop.

We have to get him back. If they manage to break him with torture, Avalon Tower’s agents will start disappearing one by one, like pawns captured in a gruesome game of chess.

“Nia? Hello? Are you listening?”

Serana’s sharp hiss in my ear jerks me from my dark thoughts, and I clench my teeth and try to focus on the street again. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I said that I see him now in the tea leaves,” Tana says. “The commander is wearing a black cloak. His silver hair is streaked with black. And as the cards foretold, he’s coming your way soon.”

“How long?” Serana asks.

“In three days.”

“What?” Serana sputters.

“No, sorry. I got a bit of pie crust in the tea leaves. It’s in about fifteen minutes.”

My muscles tighten and my pulse races as I glimpse armored Fey rounding the corner. “Serana, there are two guards a block away. Armed with spears. Watch out as they get closer.”

“What is a block?” she whispers. “That’s an American thing.”

I scramble to come up with an estimate. “Looks like maybe three hundred feet?”

“What’s that in meters?” she presses.

These were things we never covered in Avalon Tower, as I was the only American. “I don’t know. A hundred meters?”

I watch the armored Fey as they march closer beneath the golden light of the gas lamps. Despite their gleaming armor, they move with ease, their metallic eyes alert, searching for interlopers like me. Once, seeing Fey soldiers prowling England’s streets was unthinkable. Now they’re everywhere—marching between London’s glassy skyscrapers, soaring on the backs of dragons above the coast.

When they invaded the south, they’d quickly pushed the British army to the north. They now wage a bloody war in Scotland against the humans. Camelot is one of the few places in England still free from the Fey—but that’s only because it’s hidden with magic from the rest of the world.

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