The Moonlight Outcasts

Twenty years ago, Lirael buried Tor. Now he has sent her a letter.Returning to Ashfall means risking everything she escaped. At the river gate, officials demand a sample of her blood. Behind the city's prosperity, women are held captive to sustain an ancient magical system-and an empty place still waits for her.Tor has survived in a form that makes survival a cruelty. His warning draws Lirael into an uneasy company of spellcasters, outcasts, and people with good reasons to distrust one another. Over stolen drinks, they give themselves a name: the Moonlight Outcasts.Keeping one another alive will prove harder than sharing a toast.A dangerous conjunction is approaching. Freeing the captives could unleash the disaster their imprisonment has held back. Finding another way means confronting rulers who call exploitation duty, bargaining with powers that take memories as payment, and trusting a man whose secrets helped build the prison.Lirael has spent twenty years staying beyond the reach of those who claimed her. Now she must return to the heart of their power-with friends she may lose, a love she cannot safely trust, and no promise that doing the right thing will leave any of them whole.The Moonlight Outcasts is an adult fantasy of dangerous magic, political intrigue, slow-burning romance, and costly loyalties, set in a world of elves, orcs, vampires, warlocks, and oathbound knights.