Novels by Anika Nel

The Starveil Caravan is unlike anything I've ever seen.Even battered and diminished by the Dominion attack, it's an impressive sight—six remaining wagons painted in deep indigos and blacks, trimmed with silver filigree that catches the light like captured stars. Each wagon is pulled by creatures I've only heard about in stories: Voidsteppers, massive horse-like beasts with coats that shimmer like oil slicks and eyes that glow faint purple. They're native to the floating shards that orbit the Core Sea, and they're said to be able to walk through shadows when properly trained.The people of the caravan are just as varied and exotic. I see Varellan nomads with their crystalline skin-markings, Marshborn with subtle gill-slits along their necks, even a pair of Runeborn whose skin glows faintly with etched symbols of power. They eye Kael and me with a mixture of curiosity and wariness as we help load supplies and tend to the wounded.No one speaks to us directly. Not yet.I'm given a spot

The world beyond Eclipsehaven is nothing like I imagined.I've spent my entire life in a place where silver light touches everything, where the glow of the Core Sea and the luminescence of moonwood trees make true darkness impossible. But out here, beyond the borders of Lyriah's coastal settlements, the night is real. Deep. Vast. Punctuated only by stars that seem impossibly distant and cold.It terrifies me. And it exhilarates me in equal measure.I've been walking for two days now, following the coastal road that winds south along the fractured shoreline. The Core Sea is my constant companion to the east, its blue-white glow a reminder of everything I've left behind. To the west, the silver forests of Lyriah stretch endlessly, their trees still luminous but growing darker the further I travel from Eclipsehaven.I'm heading toward the Crossroads of Aetherwyn—a trading hub where the borders of Lyriah, Meristhal, and Varelle meet. It's the only place I know of where someone like me mig

The morning after the dream, I can't shake the feeling that something has shifted. Changed. Like a door I didn't know existed has been cracked open, and now I can't close it no matter how hard I try.I can still feel the ghost of Kael's touch on my skin—the warmth of his palm against my cheek, the desperate pressure of his mouth on mine. My lips are tender, as if the kiss was real. As if he was real.Kael.Even his name feels dangerous. It sits on my tongue like a secret I'm not supposed to know, heavy with meaning I can't quite grasp.I sit at the edge of my bed in the small room I've occupied all my life, staring at the Dreambowl on the wooden table beside me. It's a shallow basin carved from moonwood and filled with water that gleams silver in the perpetual twilight filtering through my window. Every family in Eclipsehaven keeps one—a sacred vessel for catching dreams, for recording the visions that Irethiel sends in the night.But I've never put mine to use. My mother forbade it y

They say I was born screaming under a double eclipse, when both moons bled across the sky and the Core Sea turned black as a wound. My mother never spoke of that night, but I've seen the fear in her eyes every time the moons align—like she's watching a prophecy unfold that she's powerless to stop.I am Sevia of Eclipsehaven, and I have been haunted all my life.Not by ghosts or spirits, though the villagers whisper that I might as well be one myself. No, my haunting is far more intimate than that. It comes in the form of dreams so vivid they taste real, dreams that bleed silver into my waking hours and leave me gasping for air when I wake. Dreams of him.The stranger with eyes like molten moonlight.He has no name in my dreams—or if he does, he's never given it to me. He simply is, as inevitable as the tide, as constant as the luminous glow that bathes Eclipsehaven even in the deepest hours of night. I've seen him every night for as long as I can remember, standing at the edge of my c