Excerpt: Nightshine

She couldn’t picture him, here in this warm cabin. He had been described to her, of course—he was only a year older than her, and was purportedly very handsome( “As handsome as you are beautiful, and that is nothing to be bargained at,” her mother had told her)—and yet she could not imagine him, could not envision his white-blond hair and pale skin, grey eyes, tall stature. They had never even written—after the treaty was completed, she had set out immediately, hardly having time to bid goodbye to her country and kin. Even his name was useless to her—Ketsin, a simple collection of syllables. Danúian names did not tell the mettle of their wearers—they were merely words, repeated down generation after generation. Her eldest son would be Ketsin, as would his, all down their line until the world’s ending…