If you’re here, then there’s a good chance that you’ve been taking part of a very special scavenger hunt created by the one and only Melissa Blair. But if you thought the title was all that was going to be revealed, we have a big surprise for you! Not only are we revealing the cover, but you’re also getting your very first sneak peek at the third book in The Halfling Saga.
Cosmopolitan is revealing the cover and the first chapter of Melissa Blair’s A Vicious Game, which is set to be released on February 6, 2024. The cover, designed by artist Kim Dingwell, matches the previous two books and features Keera looking fierce as ever.
And you don’t have to wait until next year to find out what happens next as Union Square & Co. already has a description to get you even more excited:
More From Cosmopolitan
“It seems fate has dealt me the same hand again. I know how to play it.”
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. Keera spends her days drinking and her nights avoiding the strange dreams that have haunted her since she returned from the capital.
Keera’s family in Myrelinth won’t let her go without a fight. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera’s ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion…
The pivotal third installment in the Halfling Saga will upend everything Keera thought she knew about her enemies…and her allies.
And that’s not all we’re revealing. We also have the first official chapter, so you can already get a jump start on reading before it comes out.
So get ready, grab some of Melissa’s previous books, and don’t forget to preorder your copy, because you’re going to want to read the rest of it when A Vicious Game finally drops.
An Excerpt From A Vicious Game
By Melissa Blair
Chapter One
A cold wave crashed over me and drowned out my dreamless sleep. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’d been woken up, in a stable, by having a bucket of water poured on my head. “Do you have a death wish?” I seethed through my teeth as I reached for the dagger at my hip, but it wasn’t there.
Gerarda Vallaqar peered down at me with pure revulsion etched into her round cheeks and flat nose. If I didn’t feel like there was an ax sticking out of my skull, I might’ve found it unsettling. Gerarda was short for a Halfling; she hadn’t inherited any Elvish height from her immortal ancestors and was only as tall as a small Mortal woman. It might have been the first time she’d ever looked down at me in her entire life.
From her smug grin, I could tell she was enjoying it.
“This is pathetic, Keera.” She waved her hand over the stall that had been my bed for the night. I was propped against a watering trough with a saddle blanket strewn over my legs. There was no horse in the stall with me but the scent of its shit lingered on my clothes.
I rubbed my temples, which did nothing to quell the headache. There was only one thing that could. “You speak as if I meant to spend the night in the stables.”
Gerarda folded her arms over her chest. There was no longer any hint of a grin on her face. Only a stern expression that she’d learned from Hildegard, our mentor when we had trained together at the Order. I flinched and looked away. I didn’t need any more reminders that Hildegard was dead. Or that her death had been my fault.
“That only makes it more pathetic,” Gerarda mumbled. “You drank yourself into such a stupor that you couldn’t find your way back to your room?”
Every muscle in my stomach screamed as I pulled myself into an upright position. I patted the ground, feeling for my wineskin. “I knew where my burl was. It didn’t move.” Even the sound of my own voice rattled the ache in my skull. It wasn’t finding my burl that had been the problem, it was my inability to get up the Myram tree without falling to my death. If anything, I had been responsible. Not that Gerarda would give me the credit.
My fingers rubbed against something soft. I pulled the cork free from the skin and hung it over my mouth. A few droplets of rich Elvish wine splattered against my tongue and the burning in my throat eased a little. I let the wineskin drop to the floor of the stall and pulled myself up onto my feet. I slipped and whacked my entire body into the wall of roots.
Gerarda took a quick step backward. She made no move to help.
I closed my eyes and ignored the pain radiating from my ribs. They weren’t broken and the bruise would be mended by my healing gift before it had time to fully ink my skin. “If I’m such a disappointment, why are you here?”
Gerarda glanced down the aisle between the two rows of stables to where the root-packed ceiling gave way to the outside air. “The Shadow is digging a hole around the Myram with his pacing.” Gerarda shrugged. “He may be too cowardly to say that you’re a pathetic excuse for a savior, but I’m not. Your sorrows are not bigger than this war, Keera. Even if you’ve given up.”
I scoffed and slammed my hands on the top of the stable door. It rattled hard enough to shake the others in a series of metal clanks that echoed down the corridor. “Given up? We lost, Gerarda. I may be a drunk, but I am not a fool. I attended the same meetings as you.”
Gerarda’s black eyes narrowed. “So you choose to do nothing while our sisters are left at the mercy of Damien? Left to be farmed for their blood until they’re too weak to breathe?”
My shoulders sunk to the ground. Gerarda spoke as if being haunted by what had happened to the Shades wasn’t the very reason I needed to pull myself into that familiar oblivion each night. “The Shades haven’t been spotted since Damien crowned himself king.” Two moons had passed since then. I didn’t say the rest aloud. If Gerarda had any hope that the Shades were still alive, I would not be the one to take it from her. Even when I knew there was no hope to be found.
Their helpless screams rung in my ears. I shivered at the memory. My throat dried as I swallowed down the truth. Gerarda would come to accept their deaths in her own time. I didn’t need to give her the details.
She folded her arms. I could have recited the script of her argument on her lips before they even opened. I thought it was best if we skipped to the end. “What is there left to do?” I threw my arms into the air. “Damien has raised an army larger than this continent has ever seen and adds more swords to it still. The Light Fae are gone. They are never coming back, and neither is their magic. The Shades are—” I stopped myself and kicked the door of the stable. A strong gust of wind blew down the corridor hard enough that Gerarda had to grab a root to stay upright.
I took a deep breath and tried to get my newfound powers under control. “Any mission to free the Shades would only end with more lives lost. Don’t blame me for stating a truth you refuse to name.”
Gerarda stretched up on the tips of her toes but she still didn’t reach my chin. There was nothing but cold disgust on her face as she glowered at me. “Are you calling me a coward?”
I shook my head, already exhausted from the argument. “We can’t rescue the Shades with a team of two, Gerarda. So who would you ask? Who would you call to sacrifice themselves for a fruitless mission purely to assuage your guilt?”
She pursed her brown lips as she fell back on her feet.
I didn’t give her time to answer; my words were hot steam that I needed off my tongue. “I hope you never need to become as practiced at measuring the weight of people’s lives as I have, but I didn’t just give up. The numbers are against us. We have no great army and our swords and arrows can’t match the weapons Damien has created. The best we can hope for is that he doesn’t try to take the Faeland to prove himself a better conqueror than his father. We must try to find a way to be content spending our days here.”
And forgetting what happens at night. I pulled a small vial of spare wine from my pocket and drank it in a single swallow.
Gerarda’s teeth snapped together. “But we have magic.”
“Barely.” My eyes crossed as they adjusted to the sunlight peering in from the outer meadow.
Gerarda raised a pointed brow. The movement was so quick and precise it reminded me of the throwing knives she’d always carried with her as the Dagger. They weren’t with her now. Perhaps she’d left them behind along with her title when we fled the capital. She jutted her head to the side. “We have a dozen magic wielders.”
Of course Gerarda was arrogant enough to count all the Fae when Feron had yet to decide to join the rebellion.
It took every ounce of will I had not to grab her by the arms and shake her. “We have eleven. And that’s including me and a Dark Fae who can barely control our powers, let alone use them.” I couldn’t bring myself to say Riven’s name. Even knowing that he was outside somewhere in the city waiting for me made me feel sick enough to want to drown myself in the watering trough.
Gerarda lifted her hands in exasperation and yanked open the stable door. I didn’t know if she was letting me out or preparing to fight me inside. “You haven’t even tried to train your powers!”
“I hardly see how that concerns you.”
Gerarda pulsed her fist over and over again, refusing to get out of my way. “Once the seals are broken, magic will be returned to its full strength. A dozen—”
I raised a brow.
Gerarda rolled her eyes. “Elevenwielders will be more than enough to halt Damien’s plans. Enough to protect the Halflings we left behind.”
I didn’t hold in my laugh, though the sting of pain in Gerarda’s eyes cut it short. “You and Vrail have been working on the seals for weeks. It’s time for you to accept that we missed our shot at bringing the magic back.”
I had been so close. When I found that Elder birch in the Rift, I thought it had been the final step to bring the Light Fae home.
My mother’s kin.
My kin.
But they were gone. All that remained was their magic, which they had locked away in different parts of Elverath to keep Aemon from using it to kill the rest of the Fae. It had worked, but at great cost to this land and its people.
All that magic could’ve been unlocked with one single pierce of my bloodstone dagger through Aemon’s heart. But Damien had gotten there first and now the magic was out of reach.
Gerarda blinked up at me like I was a violet moon. “You truly have given up.”
My throat seared but I didn’t bother answering her question. No one knew the exact locations of the seals. Vrail had come to the same conclusion I had that day in the Rift with my mother. Five groups of Light Fae sacrificed themselves to create five siphons that drained the mainland of all its magic. But magic couldn’t be destroyed, only stored. The Light Fae had used water as a barrier to protect each siphon and the seal that kept the magic stored inside of it, but there were countless islands where each of them could be. Vrail had yet to find one of them, let alone discover if the seal could be broken after Aemon’s death. I stepped around her and into the aisle between the stalls. Killian’s horse poked his head over his pen, his glassy, bored eyes staring at us.
Gerarda followed me out of the stables, right on my heels. I sighed and stopped mid-stride. She spun in front of me, her hair fanning out in a black wave before settling along her jaw. “Hildegard died believing you had a plan.”
My breath caught with such force it was as if the air had turned to water and filled my lungs. Gerarda’s eyes were sharp and piercing like a blade pressed to my throat, daring me to breathe again. I refused to recoil. “I had a plan. It failed.”
Gerarda lifted her chin. “Then help us craft a new one. You’re meant to save us—”
The wind outside whipped violently at the ground as I stepped toward Gerarda. “And I failed at that too.” Hot air burned through my nostrils like fire smoke as I tried to rein in my gusts. “I never claimed that title. No matter what my mother wanted, what Hildegard wanted, whatever plans this guild of yours had for me.”
Gerarda’s jaw tightened, but her lips stayed shut.
“Perhaps the true mistake was you all putting your trust in me. Where I go, death follows.” The heaviness of those words was almost enough to knock me to the ground, but I did not drop my gaze from Gerarda’s face, even as my magic flicked black hair across her freckled cheeks.
She glanced down at the strands and I could hear her thought just as plainly as if she had voiced it. Imagine what you could train this to do to him.
A small part of me—the trained soldier who still yearned to protect her kin—shuffled in the depths of my despair. But I knew the truth. I had seen it. The skin along my arm itched from it.
Magic or no, the Crown could not be defeated.
Damien had proven himself to be more bloodthirsty than his father. It wasn’t enough for him to rule over Halflings, he had begun to use their blood to make magical weapons that would wreak havoc on anyone who thought to oppose him. And the weapons he didn’t need, he sold to the highest bidder. And those bidders had paid for an army so large there was no chance we could take them, even if every soul in the Faeland joined the fight.
All we could do was survive and I wouldn’t be judged on how I planned on doing so.
“I thought you were better,” Gerarda whispered, more to herself than to me.
I plucked a piece of grass from the tangle of my braid and let it drift to the ground, my gusts finally settling. I thought of all those Shades who had never made it off that island. Whose last days had been spent in cruel misery at Damien’s command. My throat seared as I thought of the young initiates I had helped train. Their lives had been ended before they’d had the chance to begin.
My fists shook beside me as I met Gerarda’s gaze once more. “I don’t have anything to be better for anymore.”
#
I thought Gerarda had been exaggerating, but Riven had left a flattened, brown line around the Myram tree. He spotted me the moment I stepped into the clearing and halted. I dropped my gaze back to the brown ring, so I didn’t have to see the wave of disappointment that crashed across Riven’s face.
I shielded my eyes with my hands as I looked up to where the tall groves swung against the sky. The suns had already reached midday.
I spotted two familiar figures walking along one of the bridges of twisted branches just above our heads. Vrail was chattering away while Syrra stared down at me. This had become our habit. I pretended she wasn’t perched above me like a bird and she kept her mouth shut.
“If you’re wanting to lecture me, Gerarda already did.” I dropped my hands and continued toward one of the five branches that curved down from the top of the Myram and sunk into the hidden city below. I wanted to swipe a casket of wine from the cellars while I still had enough wits to carry it up to my burl by faelight.
Riven did not take a step toward me, he just stopped. I could feel the grass around him relax. Sweat hung from his thick brow, down to his neck. His long mane of raven silk was tied back, though not in its usual half braid, like he hadn’t found the time to weave it. “We need to talk.” He flexed his jaw. There was no warmth in his face, none of the usual kindness that he always reserved for me. Instead, his expression was one of pure resolve.
I had become another thing for him to fight.
“No, we don’t.” I kept walking, but my throat tightened until my breath was nothing more than a wheeze. I had been avoiding Riven for weeks and being the kind Fae he was, he kept his distance, though his burl was lit each night.
That was part of the reason I was finding other places to sleep in the little spurts I allowed myself. I didn’t need the constant reminder of his goodness in the face of my emptiness.
“Keera.” He took a step toward me as his shadows circled around my ankles.
I ignored them and kept walking.
Riven only quickened his pace. “There are things you need to know.” His words were strained and breathy.
“I’m not interested in hearing them.” I had missed the last three meetings with the other rebels. I had no energy left for planning and plotting. My jaw flexed as I stepped by him, pointedly avoiding his pleading gaze.
Riven grabbed my arm.
“Don’t.” I spun around to face him and a gust of wind shot from my hand. It collided with Riven’s chest and threw him onto his back. I stared at my open hand but I didn’t apologize.
When Riven’s surprise settled, he looked up at me with the worst expression of all.
Pity.
“Keera—”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to hear whatever you have to tell me, Riven. I don’t have enough strength for hope and I don’t have enough wine for any more disappointment. When you need someone dead, come find me.”
Riven stood and his shadows flared out in every direction along the ground. The usually soft curves had turned sharp as they always did when he was angry. Riven’s face was hard as he stared at me. My breath hitched and for the briefest moment I thought Riven might move to strike. Not to maim, but to spar. I readied myself for a battle but Riven didn’t budge.
Instead, his shoulders collapsed and he rubbed his brow. “I don’t know how to help you, diizra.”
My heart twinged at his special name for me, but it was nothing compared to the burning in my throat or the hollow ache in my core. The fresh screams that fueled my nightmares echoed through the grove for only my ears to hear.
I turned away from him, knowing there was nothing Riven could do to quiet them. “I don’t want you to help me.”
I don’t want help at all.
Excerpt copyright © 2023 by Melissa Blair. Published by Union Square & Co.
A Vicious Game, by Melissa Blair, will be released on February 6, 2024. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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Entertainment Editor
Tamara Fuentes is the current Entertainment Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers TV, movies, books, celebrities, and more. She can often be found in front of a screen fangirling about something new. Before joining Cosmopolitan, she was the entertainment editor over at Seventeen. She is also a member of the Television Critics Association and the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
