The Shock of Night – Book 2 of The Darkwater
Ten years ago, Willet Dura, the king’s reeve walked out of the Darkwater Forest after spending days inside. An impossibility.
In The Shock of Night, Willet is assigned to investigate the brutal attack of a Servant priest and his aide. When he discovers the priest still lives, he finds him on the edge of death at the house of passing. There, the priest pulls Willet close and screams a single word in an ancient language.
Willet picks up the threads of the his investigation, but as the clues lead him toward a shadowy group with the power to topple kings, he grapples with a seemingly impossible gift, the ability to see into another’s mind.
Willet must navigate his dangerous gift and the even more dangerous Vigil as he confronts a horrifying truth: the keys to his mystery are bound up with the Darkwater, and what happened to him inside it.
Meet the characters of The Shock of Night
The least of reeves (the king’s constables for commoners), Willet Dura covers the poor quarter and lives alone in a small room of the King’s Castle. Five years earlier in the war, he led his men in retreat into the Darkwater, a forest that drives any who let the sun set on them there violently insane. Days later, alone, he walked out, seemingly untouched. But now, whenever there’s murder in the city, Willet seeks out the victim. He wakes with no memory of his “night-walk.” And sometimes there’s blood on his clothes. Burdened by guilt from his present and past, he struggles under his self-imposed penance to be worthy of forgiveness.
Gael Alainn and her sister, Kera, together hold the gift of Craft that enables the head of their family, their Uncle, Count Alainn, to amass a fortune. Her Uncle has orchestrated an arranged marriage between Gael and Count Orlan, a man who’s already buried two previous wives under mysterious circumstances. Gael plots her escape from the arranged marriage, a plot threatened by Willet’s investigation.
Custos, one of Willet’s few friends, works as the librarian in the grand library of the Merum Cathedral. He uses his eidetic memory to assist Willet in unraveling the plot to commit regicide behind the murders in their kingdom.
Eldar is Willet’s priest and friend. Under the seal of the confessional, Eldar becomes the only other person in Bunard who knows that Willet survived the Darkwater. Ensconced in his run-down church, devoid of parishioners because of the last war, Eldar provides hope to Willet’s guilt and self-accusation while hiding the truth of who he is, himself.
Rory is the head of the urchins, discarded orphans who live in the abandoned homes in the city’s poor quarter. They eke out a living begging, thieving, and bluffing the residents of their city out of their coin. Following the death of Ilroy, Rory strikes a bargain with Willet to provide him with a unique witness that allows Willet to link the two deaths and come a step closer to finding the killer.
Gifted with the seventh gift, the Vigil watch over the Darkwater, and execute any who find their way in and back out again. Along with their guards, the best and deadliest swordsmen in the world, they ensure the safety of the northern continent. When Willet is given the seventh gift by their dying leader, they must come to terms with the evil locked in Willet’s mind, or kill him for it.