We all will pay tithe in the end.
The horn blows over Elphame.
The warning is ignored.
An oath has been broken.
The wild hunt has begun.
No lie can save you.
The truth cannot set you free.
Elphame has called for blood.
We all will pay tithe in the end.
In Elphame, where every Crow Taken faces slavery and certain death at the hands of Fae, Perdi is the first to survive and the last to be Taken. Cut off from the mortal realm, the horn of Elphame sounds for only her. An oath breaker has been named, and the call has tasked Perdi with hunting down the truth before wild magic decides the fate of them all. It rests on Perdi’s shoulders to save herself, her people and the man she loves from an unstoppable power—the Caller of Crows.
Excerpt:
I was born twice, once of hope and once of horror—once of the mortal world and once of Elphame. The second time, the pain was mine alone to bear, and I came out twisted and broken, like the other creatures haunting these lands. Like everything else worth having in Elphame, survival wasn’t mine to keep. I had merely chosen to die on a different day. Each day between now and then, when the end finally came with my name, would be a struggle for the next. The day I put on these wings was the last day I didn’t hurt. I’d known it wouldn’t be easy, but I’d been foolish enough to think it wouldn’t be this bloody hard. That was my fate, as it was for each Crow before me—to be Taken from my home and brought into this land to suffer, to crave a home that I was not sure even existed anymore, one where my heart was whole, my body loved and my soul left untarnished and unbroken.
I had been told to accept who I was, who I had become—a Crow, a Wildling, a Soul-Eater, told to face the horror of it all or I’d never heal from it. But I wasn’t born in the pits of hell like the rest of this new world. I was dragged through it, and it was all too much to carry on a broken back and with a soggy soul. I couldn’t put my pieces back together when I didn’t understand how I had gotten so broken and why I had been fated with this life. It was in our nature—mortals—to question every intricacy of life, to wonder, to grieve over the baggage we carried. And the person I had grown to count on, Solas, had no answers for me. He hid more within his dark soul than I dared to understand. He was the only one yet to remove the mask he’d carefully constructed in the Golden Court. He still wore his every day, and I wondered if he had ever spent a day without it. Even in all of his secrets and lies, I envied his ability to choose his next step with such ease and not crumble under the weight of each decision. But I suppose one did not become a king or maintain that throne with an iron fist by worrying over the small stuff, like the condition of his soul or anyone else’s.
Lanne Garrett 