I will be pulling the book and rereleasing it in April in an attempt to boost readership. I will post another update like this beforehand.

  The title will be the same, so it will be easy to find.

  I need to do some research first to figure out the best way to do it.

  After my second release I will publish book two on Royal road.

  Thank you for reading!

  Preview of Book two: The World Beneath

  Lillibet crossed to her bag, took a bottle, sipped. Her reflection in the mirror was all straight lines and calm.

  “You make it look easy,” I blurted, once I could mostly breathe again. “I wish I had your gift. For combat, I mean. It’s…amazing.”

  She exhaled through her nose, not quite a sigh. “All warriors say that,” she said. “Cáo?kin, Naga?kin, Vanara?kin. They look at Banshee?kin and think, ‘I want that.’”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “You know where the danger is so you can avoid it. Who wouldn’t want that?”

  She turned to look at me directly. “Is that all you understand of my legacy gift?”

  “I mean…kind of? You feel when a lethal strike is coming. So you move.”

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  “Yes,” she said. “But do you know how that works?”

  I shook my head.

  “We feel imminent death,” Lillibet said.

  The words sat there between us, flat and heavy.

  “This is why the greater the threat, the easier it is to know where not to be,” she went on, voice calm. “Where a blow is that will endanger our team.”

  My brain flashed back to the mall—Pigmy Argus rearing, tail whipping up. Theo in front of it, stupid and brave, eyes locked on its throat. The tail strike: the whoosh of air, the crack as it hit the wall because Lillibet had stepped in and knocked it off line a heartbeat before... If she hadn’t—

  “Of course,” she said, “knowing where the threat is, and avoiding it, are two different things. That is why my parents had me learn ballet.”

  There was something in the way she said ballet—a faint hitch, like the word had sharp edges.

  “Control over one’s body is key,” she said. “To get out of the way when death comes for you. Or put yourself into its path when it is coming for someone else.”

  She set her water bottle down, very precisely, on the edge of the mat.

  “Diana,” she said. “Do you have any idea what it is like to go through life feeling death everywhere?”

  I didn’t answer right away. I thought of the Wraith attacking me on the lawn. The storm drain tunnels. The mall.

  But that was…moments. Not constant.

  She shook her head slightly, as if answering herself. “You do not,” she said. “Not truly. At school, it is less.” Her gaze flicked up toward the ceiling. “Most of the time. But in combat practice with live weapons…on patrols…”

  Her eyes came back to me. They were as steady as always, but I could see something under the surface now.

  “It is cold,” she said quietly. “And sharp. And constantly trying to claim me.” Her hand brushed her sternum. “Every cut that would kill. Every fall that would break a neck. Every time a teammate steps half a foot wrong. I feel all of it. The threat. The pull of death.”

  She let that hang for a beat.

  “But I am Banshee?kin,” she said. “And Banshee?kin fight. It is the only thing our legacy is good for.”