Read an Excerpt From Dark Moon, Shallow Sea

When Phoebe, goddess of the moon, is killed by the knights of the sun god, Hyperion, all who follow her are branded heretics.

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton, the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy featuring divine betrayal, ghosts, and self-discovery—out from Blackstone Publishing on October 31.

When Phoebe, goddess of the moon, is killed by the knights of the sun god, Hyperion, all who follow her are branded heretics. With Phoebe gone, the souls of the dead are no longer ferried to the underworld, and instead linger on as shades who feast on the blood of the living.

Raef is a child of the night. He lives in the shadows, on scraps, eking out a meager existence as a thief. But when an ornate box is sequestered in the Temple of Hyperion, the chance of a big score proves too great to resist. What he finds within propels him on an odyssey across the sea and back again, altering the course of his life forever.

Seth is a knight of the sun. But unlike the others of his order, the fire of Hyperion only brings him pain. He believes he deserves this penance, exacted for his unknown origins. Tasked with recovering the contents of the box, Seth must also venture beyond the horizon if he’s to learn the truth about himself.

In a dying world divided by the greed of those in power, Raef and Seth find their destinies intertwined—and learn they might have more in common than they ever imagined.

This couldn’t be happening. The Hierarch himself had called them to this task.

He could not fail.

The Grief rose as Seth and Sophia raced outside. It pooled across the cobbles, drawn like skeins of shadow.

Seth spied two men standing face-to-face in an alley. Were they kissing? Flushing, Seth turned away. This city had no modesty.

“Help!” a woman cried.

She stumbled into view, skirts fluttering around her.

“What’s wrong?”

“A carriage—” she gasped. “It nearly ran me down. They were loading something—” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I think it was a body.”

Sophia charged in the direction the woman had pointed.

“Do you need help?” Seth asked.

“No, no.” She waved him off. “I’m fine.”

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Dark Moon, Shallow Sea

With a nod, Seth followed Sophia.

The fire coiled inside him, feeding on his excitement, his anxiety and worry. Seth poured it all into the sword, felt the heat through the leather of his gauntlet as his blade flared, chasing back the gloom.

A body, the woman had said. The box was coffin-sized. It had weighed enough to contain a corpse. They’d carried it through the city, up from the docks, and interred it in a crypt. He’d felt the cold through the thick leather of his gauntlets.

A body. Seth was a fool. What else could it hold?

He wasn’t supposed to question. He wasn’t supposed to imagine. It wasn’t his place, and he’d been happy to ignore a frozen box marked with the sign of the moon, but now he felt blind.

If the contents were stolen, then surely he must ask questions? Surely they must know more to fulfill their task?

Or was that the darkness calling to him, tempting him by way of curiosity?

He wished Father Geldar were there to guide him. He almost wished he was back in Teshur.

Seth stopped that line of thinking.

His dependency on his old mentor and the rigor of the monastery was another of his failings, one more reason he was not the knight he was supposed to be. The box was not the Inquisitor’s mission, and if it had been, Geldar would not have lost its contents.

Seth’s mind spun. This had been his chance, his one chance. He felt like he’d been thrown from one of the city’s towers.

Sophia turned a corner, her boots rapping on the dark, mist-slicked cobbles as she charged ahead. None of the streets ran a straight course. Walled by brick and soot-stained granite, they all looked the same. Versinae’s towers were high, casting deep shadows. There were few signs, and the windows were shuttered, giving everything a too-similar appearance.

Cocking an ear, Seth chased after the clap of Sophia’s boots, but the city twisted the noise back on him. He called her name, but the rising Grief drank the sound. Seth did not fear its unsettling touch, only his own failings. He could call the god’s fire but still shuddered at the grasping hands and vague eyes of the incorporeal dead.

“Sophia!” he shouted again. He thought he heard a response and turned a corner to find himself in a dead end.

The fire inside him tensed, feeding on his fear of it, ready to test his will.

Seth forced one long breath. Then another.

Versinae’s air lacked grit, the sand of Teshur’s desert. Damp and slick, it slid fingers beneath his armor and caressed the back of his neck, bidding him to relax his guard.

They’d brought the box up from the docks. Seth had taken in as many details as he could, but all of these buildings looked the same.

He’d return to the temple, look for the carriage. Maybe Sophia had returned.

Seth retraced his steps, but found himself somewhere new, a small plaza. Its wide ring of a fountain sported a trio of bronze statues. Green with age and verdigris, it gurgled softly. There were no people, no one to ask for directions.

The Grief curled around his feet, greasy and black, tendrils twisting around his boots like cat tails. It veiled the stars. Seth’s sword provided the only light.

I should not be here alone, he thought unbidden.

Perhaps Versinae held the death of its patron goddess against him, against all the Knights of Hyperion, and the city meant to punish them. Zale had already paid the price.

“I am the light.”

His words kindled the god’s fire. It leaped, too quick, too near the surface, and singed the leather of his gauntlet. It could consume him, and would if he unleashed it.

It could burn the city to the ground.

“Father guide me,” Seth prayed.

He forced the fire back, begged it to sleep even as it crackled, snarling at him as it fought for its freedom.

One of the shallowed canals lay ahead, a bricked canyon with a gulley running down its center. Seth could follow it to the bay, find his way down and back up from the old docks.

Steadying his breath, he descended the nearest ladder. His boots sank into the garbage piled at the edge. He avoided the open sewer at the center, lifted his sword, and tried to shutter his nose.

He’d gone a while before he spied them. Three gray figures, like charcoal sketches against the darker bricks, they hunched over a fallen shape.

He could see through them, see the dog they lingered over. Dipping hands into its blood, they smeared it across their lips. Each sip of its life, each dart of their tongues, made them more solid.

Shades, new or greedy enough that they were not so starved of blood that they’d lost their forms and joined the Grief.

Seth took a step backward. He could leave them to their grisly meal, find another path, but he had his duty.

“No,” he said. Forcing his cowardice aside, he lifted his sword. “No shadow shall stand against his light.”

The blade flared. The god’s fire wouldn’t have burned Sophia or Zale. They were true knights, not marred by his flaw. Inside his gauntlet, Seth’s skin blistered and bled, just a little.

Sensing it, the shades swam toward him.

Made stronger by the dog’s blood, they flickered less, looked more real, more solid, but they hungered still.

A ghost in a nightgown led their charge. Her open throat spoke of a grisly death. Seth slashed out. She dissolved into mist. The taste of rot, damp, and sizzling blood sent a ripple through his guts, breaking his focus.

The fire overran the hilt of his sword and crept toward his hand. It hungered for him like he was a shadow, just as the ghosts hungered for blood.

“I am the light,” Seth spat through gritted teeth.

The fire halted at his gauntlet, but the time it took him to regain control gave the other dead the chance to flank him. Seth spun and nicked the one to his left, a boy in rough clothes. The third shade, a workman, retreated into the alley wall.

Seth’s chest heaved as the fire fought its leash. It wanted out, to light the trash and seaweed, the dog’s corpse. Above all, it wanted him. The flames surged.

The faintest touch of cold on his ear gave him warning. Seth stabbed over his shoulder to pierce the approaching workman. The spirit burned as the boy dove for Seth’s face, his fingers extended like claws. Seth had no time to duck. He loosed the fire and let it have its way. It burst from him in a ring, rabid and directionless.

The flames incinerated the ghost and lit the garbage. It sizzled against the canal’s fetid walls. He’d thought the dog dead, but it let out a high whine and fell silent as it burned.

“No,” Seth said, dropping to his knees.

Ignoring his singed cheek and the ashes drifting like snow around him, he scooped the dog into his arms. It did not stir.

He’d done this. His failing, his inability to tame the fire, had killed it.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

The taste of stiff burned hair and flesh made his stomach heave again. He did not know how long he sat cradling the dog.