SYNOPSIS: Two young women. Heirs to altogether different hereditary burdens. Yet bound by a monstrous threat to their village.
Gabrielle is the first woman in Alveus to carry the mantle of Hunter, which comes with an obligation to kill the faery beasts murdering travelers in Brimmond Wood. Wary of the power she wields as guardian of her people, Gabrielle is summoned by her first love, a seductress who shattered her heart into pieces a decade ago.
Isabeau is the rarest of nobility―a lady duke. She is also afflicted by a curse that leaves her in a deep sleep between the gloaming and daylight. How can she begin her tenure as protector when she can’t keep her village safe from whatever stalks its darkest hours? For that, she needs the help of the Hunter.
Against her will, Gabrielle is falling in love all over again. But what new threats will arise when Gabrielle and Isabeau’s star-crossed destinies collide with the beast of Brimmond Wood?
Excerpt 3—from A TREASON OF MAGIC by Melissa Marr
Text copyright © 2026 by Melissa Marr, Published by 47 North
Father and I part ways at the mouth of Brimmond Wood, and I glance back at Maudite Castle. Once I thought I’d make my home there, at least part of the time, spinning a fantasy about dividing our lives between Isabeau’s castle and my manor. Eventually, some other woman will be her duchess, and if I’m lucky we can share the sort of friendship our fathers had.
The journey through the Brimmond Wood feels different alone. Every crunch of a creature’s scurrying or footfalls in the debris is loud. I jump like a scared child when a bevy of wild game birds launch into the air with a loud cacophony of wings and scattering leaves. I am immobile completely when I see the reason for their flight. A great cat sìth prowls after them, still in pursuit even though the birds are now aloft.
The faery cat pays me no attention as it slinks from one patch of sunlight to the next, muscle and fur flowing more like molten gold than an animal. I study the sharp claws that extend from each massive paw as the cat watches the treetops for the birds. The cat’s claws retract as I watch, and it turns toward me.
I am fixed in place by the moss-green irises focused intently upon me.
“I mean you no harm,” I say, voice louder than I like in the silent wood. “Unless you were the killer this morning . . .”
Although nothing in the Hunter journals says that the cat sìth speaks any of the languages of humans, the cat in front of me smiles then, looking more amused than an animal ought to ever look. The gesture flashes teeth at me. One serrated tooth is the size of my arm.
“You would have to put a man’s whole head in your maw to behead him.” I scoff at the image. The dead man’s skull would have been crushed like a melon, and the musty scent of cat sìth would’ve lingered at the site of the death.
This is not the killer we have to stop. This faery beast is massive and daunting to see, but the strange beast only eats birds or squirrels. I tell it, “I cannot imagine ever harming you. Go get your birds.”
A long, split tongue lashes out and licks inside its nose with a slurping noise. The cat sìth is not the most refined faery, but it’s not a murderer of people. With a hiss, it launches into the next sunbeam, not quite bounding, but not actually running either. Nothing in the journals clarifies how it actually moves.
“One faery suspect eliminated, and no idea where to look next.” I feel no more or less safe with a cat sìth nearby. Not seeing me as a meal is not the same as being an ally.
I watch the shadows for any other creature—or human—that might lurk there. Though I am like the cat sìth in that I am not going to be a Hunter of humans, I am always aware that my own kind is not without flaws. My father and I must weigh the possibility that any culprit we seek is a human—or a beast of this world. The forest has those threats, too. Serpent and wolf, panther or spider, both the large and small threats wait in the wooded corners of my life, too.
A scream cuts through the forest, too raw to be human, too human to be faery.
Before I can allow fear to take hold of my feet, I urge my horse in the direction of the sound.
A creature that can behead a grown man was here last night, my fear reminds me.
You are not yet the Hunter, my logic calls out.
But I have a duty, and I am fairly certain it is not a duty that will magically activate one day when I inherit this task. My calling is already present inside me. I was raised to be the Hunter, taught that my mission was to protect humanity, reminded over and again that my life is already as good as forfeit if I am a coward.
“I am no coward,” I whisper as I ride toward the general area of the scream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Marr is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series, among many other novels, short stories, and fiction for teens and children. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have been bestsellers in the US and abroad. If she’s not writing, you can find Melissa in a kayak or on a trail with her wife.
For more information, visit www.melissamarrbooks.com.
