Wayfinder

Once upon a time …

In the city of Boston, there was a tailor who could not be told a lie. Even the most honest of men couldn’t offer Lara Ann Jansen so much as an insincere compliment without her knowing the truth of it. It was the bane of her existence—until a handsome weatherman recognized it for the gift it was, and named Lara a Truthseeker.

He had searched a hundred years to find her, a truth that no one else would believe. His name was Dafydd ap Caerwyn, and he was a prince of the Seelie courts: an elf. He needed Lara’s help to find the man who had murdered his brother Merrick ap Annwn.

Both reluctant and eager, Lara agreed to join him in the Barrow-lands, the world from which Dafydd came. No sooner did they arrive than they were attacked by nightwings, the night sky itself made into demonic creatures given life by magic. Together Lara and Dafydd fought the nightwings off, only to face a far greater threat: the anger of Dafydd’s father, Emyr.

Emyr was resentful of a human’s interference in his realm and more than eager to remind Dafydd that it had been his very own arrow that struck Merrick down. Afraid, and angry that Dafydd had misled her—oh, he had not lied; he was more careful than that, but neither had he told the whole truth—Lara fled the shining citadel that housed the Seelie people, and in the surrounding wood, found a blind poet.

Like Lara, the poet Oisín was mortal, though he had been within the Barrow-lands a very long time indeed. He shared a prophecy with her:

Truth will seek the hardest path

measures that must mend the past.

Spoken in a child’s word

changes that will break the world.

Finder learns the only way

worlds come changed at end of day.

Armed with the prophecy, Lara faced Emyr again and forced a discovery none of them wanted: that Emyr’s older son, Ioan, who had been for many years hostage to Emyr’s oldest enemy Hafgan, had embraced his adopted father’s way of life and now rode against the Seelie people at the head of an army. It seemed Ioan was the likely culprit behind the magic that had forced Dafydd to murder Merrick.

At dawn, Lara, who had been just a tailor only the day before, rode with Dafydd’s army to face their common enemy.

Cruel magic ripped them apart, sending Dafydd back to Boston and leaving Ioan the opportunity to kidnap Lara and her gifts for his own people, the Unseelie. But once within his domain, Lara forced the truth from Ioan: he had ruled in his adopted father Hafgan’s name for aeons, and now sought a powerful staff called Worldbreaker, in hopes of regaining the Barrow-lands for the Unseelie.

Thanks to Oisín’s prophecy, Lara knew the staff was meant for her hands. Determined that no Unseelie should wield it, she returned to Boston through use of a true path, a magic her growing power could now command.

To her horror, months had passed in her world. Worse, Dafydd ap Caerwyn, the last person to be seen with her, had been jailed for kidnapping and possible murder, charges he had not denied. As were all the Seelie, Dafydd was allergic to iron, and was very ill when Lara rescued him from prison. Only a link to the Barrow-lands, such as the worldbreaking staff, would return him to health. Lara, whose love for the Seelie prince had grown strong, was ever-more determined to find the staff and heal Dafydd.

Just as hope seemed at hand, the nightwing monsters from the Barrow-lands attacked in Lara’s world, binding themselves together to become a many-headed hydra. Dafydd and Lara fought them off, but at great cost: Dafydd’s strength was drained utterly, and Lara was forced to turn to Ioan for help in returning Dafydd to the Barrow-lands, where he might yet survive.

Angry and afraid again—but this time afraid of losing Dafydd forever—Lara hunted down the man who had brought the nightwings to her world. To her shock, it was Merrick, Dafydd’s brother, who had staged his own death as part of a power play within the Barrow-lands. He retreated to his own world, and Lara Jansen, resolved to uncover all the hidden truths, follows him.…