The Iron Vow: Join Meghan, Ash, Puck, Grimalkin, and the entire Iron Fey cast for this final epic journey into worlds where imagination knows no boundaries…
My name is Meghan Chase.
Queen of the Iron Fey. Ruler of the Iron Kingdom. Daughter of a human mother and the immortal faery king of the Summer Court. I have survived multiple wars, faced unspeakable evil, and stopped at least two End of the World prophecies.
None of that was quite as terrifying as where I stood right now.
The sky overhead was black. No stars, no moon. Trees surrounded us, bent and twisted as if in horrible pain. A flat gray luminance filtered through the trunks, turning them into skeletal silhouettes that seemed to move whenever you looked away. In the distance, I could make out things dangling from the branches: rotting cages and sacks that bulged as they swung lazily back and forth.
I shivered. Remember those horror movies that you love so much?
Well, congratulations, now you’re in one.
A chill traced my spine. It was still out there, searching for us. I could feel its presence, old and patient, prowling through the trees. The monster that had been waiting for us the moment we’d set foot in this strange, terrible world. An Elder Nightmare, vicious and nearly unstoppable, that had attacked us as soon as we’d arrived. We’d managed to fight it off and escape, but not unscathed.
Clenching my jaw, I pressed a hand to my elbow. Beneath the bloody cloth I’d wrapped around my arm, my bones throbbed with pain. But even that was a small inconvenience compared to the bigger problem. If things had been normal, I would have healed myself by now, my fey glamour naturally restoring torn flesh and broken bones, staving off complete exhaustion and keeping me on my feet. But things were far from normal, and dread, yawning and terrible, had settled deep in my stomach.
There was no glamour in this place. None. It was a wasteland, barren and empty of magic. I could feel the deadness in the air, in the ground, in the trees around us. It made me sick. The Nevernever—the land of the fey—pulsed with magic; glamour existed in every tree and rock and living creature. It fueled our power, our very existence. It flowed from the mortal world into Faery from human dreams and emotions. From their loves, their fears, their passions and creativity.
This was nothing. This was Evenfall.
Evenfall. A mirror realm to the Nevernever, Evenfall had existed alongside Faery since the very beginning. It was home to the species of faery known as the Evenfey. These were the true bogeymen, the monsters in the darkness. The Nightmares that everyone feared. The ruler of Evenfall was the immortal, immensely powerful Nightmare King, and even the fey of the Nevernever feared him.
So much so that, in the age before the courts rose to power, the strongest fey in the Nevernever made the terrible decision to seal Evenfall away from the world. Worse, they erased all memories that Evenfall, the Nightmare King, and the Evenfey had existed at all. Cut off from the glamour of the real world and the Nevernever, the fey of Evenfall were doomed to slowly Fade into nonexistence. Starving and forgotten, the Nightmare King fell into a coma-like sleep, and the fey of Evenfall vanished from the world.
Until recently, when the Evenfey had begun appearing again. No one knew how, or why, though it was suspected that the rising anger, division, and hatred in the world had been strong enough to reach the Nightmare King in his sleep. We—myself, Ash, Puck, Grimalkin, and Nyx—had been called to a place known as InSite, where it was rumored that the Evenfey had been gathering. Deep beneath the building, we’d found a circle of Evenfey attempting to raise the Nightmare King from his slumber. We intervened, only to discover we’d been tricked. Destroying the seal did not stop the ritual as we’d hoped. Instead, it tore open the way to Evenfall. And every faery on this side of the Nevernever—Summer, Winter, Iron, and Forgotten alike—now remembered Evenfall and the Nightmare King. With the opening of the seal, the Nightmare King had stirred.
He was waking up, and if he did, he would take his revenge on the Nevernever and the fey who’d sealed off his world. The Lady and her circle, those faeries of old, were no longer alive, but the Nightmare King wouldn’t care. He had gone mad in his dreams and would destroy the Nevernever, the courts, and possibly the real world as well.
We had to stop him.
The Iron Fey: Evenfall – The Iron Vow by Julie Kagawa is out in eBook, audiobook and paperback 30th March.
