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Thea choked on a gasp as King Artos of Harenth hauled the child from the alcove and down the passageway, not away from the threat, but back towards the blood-soaked courtyard.

‘What…’ Thea breathed. This wasn’t how she’d seen it happen before; this hadn’t been what her visions had shown her —

King Artos, with Osiris at his heels, kicked the door open and thrust young Anya into the fray. ‘We have found the culprit of this insanity,’ he shouted above the violence and mayhem. ‘It is as it was prophesied! The Daughter of Darkness has wielded a blade and brought the end of days upon us!’

Little Anya tried to scramble away, but Artos kept the weapon in her tiny hand, darkness still leaking from its point.

Thunder clapped beyond the fortress walls.

‘She is the one who was prophesied,’ Osiris declared, pointing to the tendrils of magic that roiled through the air around them as lightning flashed in the night sky.

The little girl began to cry, trying to back away from the men, towards the shelter of the cart. The storm raged on, swallowing wisps of obsidian in its path, but it wasn’t enough to save her.

Osiris made a dive for the scythe, making a show of knocking it from Anya’s grasp. With a quiet cry, she dropped it, the steel singing as it hit the stone, as it fell amid the rivers of blood that trickled towards her slippered feet.

And as it did, the shadow wraiths and their darkness retreated from Thezmarr.

The timing, utterly perfect.

The next minute, Thea and older Anya stood in the Great Hall of the fortress, watching as the little girl was presented as an enemy of the midrealms.

Everyone had seen her with the Naarvian weapon.

Everyone had seen the darkness recede upon the blade being knocked from her hand.

Everyone who mattered.

Osiris’ voice rang out like a bell. ‘She is a daughter of darkness, a monster. She needs to be dealt with before she unleashes more madness upon us all. She has brought the truth of the prophecy to our very doorstep…’

Lies… All lies…A fist of panic gripped Thea’s heart, but it wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

‘How did one little girl do all this?’ someone shouted.

‘You saw it for yourselves,’ King Artos said from the dais. ‘As did I. It was just as the prophecy predicted – a girl wielded a blade and brought darkness upon us all. Had Osiris not disarmed her, we would face a dawn of fire and blood.’ He drew a trembling breath. ‘Take her.’

Obsidian swirled around Thea and suddenly she was whisked away into the night, watching another scene unfold, this one more terrifying than the last.

There was a blur of movement as the same little girl was thrown into a deep pit somewhere in the woods on the outskirts of Thezmarr.

She let out a sob – and in the shadows, a chain rattled.

A scream died on Thea’s lips as she watched a wraith stalk towards the girl, both its ankles in manacles, but its chain long enough to reach her.

The girl scrambled back, but she wasn’t fast enough.

Lightning crackled around her, but she was too small, too young to wield it against such a monster.

Talons flashed through the air.

The girl screamed and screamed as the wraith reached into her heart.

Talons pierced flesh and bone, the wraith snarling and hissing as it battled an invisible force – the force of the girl herself, Thea realised.

‘The shadow-touched people are those who fight against the curse when a reaper attempts to turn them…’Wilder had told her.

The poor girl’s screams turned into a choked gurgling noise as her body thrashed beneath the attempts of the wraith who brutalised her.

With an incensed shriek, the monster cast her aside, discarding her as though she were worthless, before it shot into the sky, breaking its chains and leaving tendrils of shadow in its wake.