Sneak Peek at Monster of the Deep Forest 👀
I remember two things from the day a monster killed the god of our mountain. Fire and him.
R’then Kylargha, the lord’s son, with his wide smile and dancing eyes. R’then, reaching his hands toward me, pulling me from the lake as flames streaked across the sky and ash rained down on the water, hissing and spitting against the ebony waves.
Our forest burned when the god died. We only survived because our lord led us to the water. We huddled together in the waves as flames devoured everything we had once held sacred. Our hunting grounds. Our shrines. The fields we’d managed to carve from the mountainside, catching precious water as it ran from winter snowfields to fill the lake and then the rivers that snake across the wide plateau.
How long we were in the lake depends on who you ask. The lord said it was three days and three nights, the same amount of time the Hero Twins spent in the underworld, but my mother would shake her head and snap her tongue. A smattering of hours at most, she says. It only felt like forever.
And, she would add, I should remember. I was not a child when the mountain burned; I remember the shrines, the fields that were destroyed. I remember what it felt like to walk beneath trees, not the massive columns of the Deep Forest, but pale, slender aspens and tall, spindly brush pine. I even, in my dreams, remember the battle that followed, when our brave lord faced the monstrous Godkiller and broke the instrument of his destruction.
But my memories of the fire are like shards of broken pottery, jagged and useless, good only for slicing my palm. No, for me, my adult life began in flames. There has only ever been the blackened shore, the quiet sobs of people who’ve lost everything, and R’then pulling me to safety.
Of course, my mother laughs at that memory too. Why would the son of the lord choose to rescue me, the fatherless, the lowest of the low-born children in the village? Why would R’then choose that moment to show the first signs of bravery in his entire life?
Still. I know my own mind. R’then pulled me from the water, like a second birth, and the path of my adult life was laid down before me. I would follow the man who saved me. His victory would be my victory, and his defeat would be my defeat.
So, when R’then was given the quest that no other would accept, it was also given to me. Even if he didn’t realize it. I listened in the shadows outside the courtyard as the lord and his advisors conferred. I knew what they would announce even before R’then knew. And I knew I would follow him, even if I had to steal away to do so.
Which, it turned out, I did not need to do. When the village assembled to wish R’then well on his hero’s journey, my mother met me with a pack in her hand and a small, resigned twist to her lips, and I realized she recognized my destiny as well. I was meant to follow him.
That was my mother’s farewell, a pack containing her favorite cooking pot and her only silk dress, and the wet press of her tears against my shoulder as she hugged me. It was just another step down the path that was set for me when the lord’s firstborn son pulled me from the waves, a path I’ve never questioned.
Until today.
Monster of the Deep Forest comes out on September 17th!
Click here to preorder Monster of the Deep Forest
