Title: The Killer's Lair - Winter of Ghosts 4
Series: Children of Nall Multi Timeline Series, Dubric - Grimdark Writer's Cut, Winter of Ghosts
Published by: TamboWrites
Release Date: January 21, 2020
Contributors: Tambo Jones (author), Michelle Maakestad (illustrator)
Pages: 122
ISBN13: 978-1951023089
ASIN: B07YLH5NL5

Buy on Amazon

An invisible slasher hunts Castle Faldorrah, slaughtering servant girls and stealing their kidneys and hair. Only Nella, Risley Romlin’s beloved, survived an attack which had left her battered in the snow, and soon the castle’s people called for the young lord’s head. Faldorrah’s aging Castellan, Dubric, declared Risley innocent but, with the killer’s dark magic tainting the food supplies, the castle’s people remain convinced of Risley’s guilt. Furious, they form a mob to bring him to justice even if they have to disassemble the castle to get to him.

Dubric and Risley’s brother Aswin, the Seer of Truth, hide Risley, Nella, and their knights in the castle cellars while they hunt the slasher, but Risley, desperate to protect Nella, flees right into the slavering mob. Attacked, injured, and unable to track the beast who had preyed upon the castle, Risley soon becomes overwhelmed helpless to watch Nella disappear into the slasher’s magic.
Risley has to escape the mob and rescue Nella. Somehow. Before the slasher kills her too. But that’s tough to do when the man who kidnapped her is invisible. It’s tougher still with a cabal of concerned citizens calling for your execution and a noose tightening around your neck.

Add on Goodreads
Buy the Book: Amazon

Also in this series:

CHAPTER 1
Inside Castle Faldorrah, Lars Hargrove, nearly fifteen summers old and Dubric’s senior page, sat on his bed and stared out the window at the brightening sky. A fine-featured lad with pale skin and hair, he had maintained his silent vigil throughout the night with a crushed wad of silver clutched in his hands; silver that had once been Malanna’s holy symbol before Dubric had crumpled it like an old, dried leaf. The other senior pages who shared his room slept through their frenzied adolescent dreams while time stretched thin before him. He had used the stream of quiet time before the first glint of dawn to turn things over in his mind. He had fretted over the hunt for the killer, over his ongoing problems with his family, and over Dubric’s tortured soul.
The mangled silver strips felt light and cool in his hands, invigorating yet somehow soothing. He hoped for an end to the madness of vicious murders and hoped Dubric would somehow see reason, but he doubted either would come to pass.

Lars could no longer see the moon—his room faced north and the moon had long since moved west—so instead he looked to the star-filled sky and prayed. After a time, he asked the Goddess, “Why? Why would you join Dubric and Oriana together like that then tear them so horribly apart? What purpose did it serve? Then to torment him by ghosts and wrongful death? What did Dubric do to deserve such endless pain? Can’t you see that if his pain were lessened, perhaps he’d come back to you? Perhaps he’d feel his soul again?”

The Goddess did not answer, but he had not expected her to.