The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.
There are no strangers in the town of Near.
These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.
But
when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears
outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of
these sayings is no longer true.
The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion.
As
the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi’s need to know
about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the
wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the
history of this nameless boy.
Delve into the
thrilling, epic tale of the young and arrogant prince Maxim Maresh, long
before he became the king of Red London and adoptive father to Kell,
the lead of A Darker Shade of Magic!
The youthful Maresh is sent
to a violent and unmanageable port city on the Blood Coast of Verose, on
strict orders from his father, King Nokil Maresh, to cut his military
teeth in this lawless landscape.
There, he encounters an unruly
band of soldiers, a lawless landscape, and the intoxicatingly deadly
presence of the newly returned pirate queen, Arisa...
Kell is one of the last
Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between
parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.
Kell
was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire
as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes
in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons,
the one without any magic left to see.
Unofficially, Kell is a
smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses
of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous
consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.
After an
exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah
Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves
him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to
another world for a proper adventure.
Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.
