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R.A. Salvatore

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The daughter of legendary Dungeons & Dragons adventurers Drizzt Do’Urden and Catti-brie fights to build her own legacy in a brand-new series from R. A. Salvatore.

My name is not “Drizzt’s daughter.”

Breezy Do’Urden is more than just the heir of legendary heroes. For the past decade, she has dedicated herself to the study of combat, magic, and more recently, to the elusive Way of Shadow, honing her body and mind into a keen and singular weapon. But even after years of effort, her parents, Drizzt and Cattie-brie, struggle to see Breezy as more than just their little girl. Determined to prove them wrong, Breezy takes on the most intense challenge she can: to fight her way to becoming a Master of Dragons at the renowned Monastery of the Yellow Rose.

Meanwhile, in the shadows of Westbridge, Dahlia Sin’felle plots her rise to power. Once a broken soul, Dahlia has few friends and fewer options to make her way through the world. But Dahlia believes she has discovered a new path to restored glory: the transformative charm and cunning of a vampire. With every step toward immortality, she consolidates her influence, building an empire from the darkness, even as she contends with her own monstrous instincts—and her complicated past with Breezy’s family.

As Breezy fights her way through the shadows, and Dahlia follows her dark ambitions, both seek to find their place in a world that can be both brutal and beautiful. No matter the challenges, their divergent paths are forged by the same choice: their fates will be theirs and theirs alone.

Leseprobe
1

Uncle Wulf­gar

“Many shadows,” Wulf­gar whispered to Breezy. He shook his head. The sun hadn’t broken the eastern horizon before them, but the snowy mountaintops were beginning to glisten, and the sky beyond them was brightening.

“I prefer the shadows,” Breezy replied. She reached for the buckle of her belt, a very special buckle, and uttered a simple command word while pressing a button just underneath its lip. With a few clicks and a whooshing sound, the seemingly normal belt buckle unrolled, producing a polished compound bow, ready and strung with a bowstring that shimmered with lightning energy.

Wulf­gar glanced back at her. “Do you know how to use that?” he asked, nodding his chin ­toward that bow, a fabulous weapon called Taulmaril the Heartseeker.

“Pull back the string,” she answered with a noncommittal shrug.

The giant man, standing nearer to seven feet than six, his arms as thick as Breezy’s thighs, brushed long wavy blond hair back from his stubbled face, narrowing eyes the color of a cloudless Icewind Dale sky to offer a look both sour and intimidating. “Shoot at nothing that I am fighting,” he quietly instructed. “Shoot at nothing that is near to me. Shoot at nothing at all unless you must.”

“You’ve killed three of the savage beasts in the week we’ve been out of Kelvin’s Cairn,” she reminded, giggling at uncle Wulf­gar’s sorry attempt to cow her. “You said you’d take me hunting, not sitting to the side cheering you on.”

“Then you’ve seen how formidable the yetis are.”

“I have and remain unimpressed. Give me one fight. You said we were heading back tomorrow.” She meant every word, for Breezy knew that she needed the experience and the trial of this battle. The most important fight of her young life was fast approaching, mere months away, and its outcome would determine her reality for the next decade or more, likely, as she climbed the monastic ranks in the far-­distant Monastery of the Yellow Rose.

Wulf­gar looked around. The two had come far to the south and east of Ten-­Towns in their pursuit of the tundra yetis, venturing into the boulder tumbles that comprised the northern foothills of the Spine of the World mountain range. Out here lay many hiding places—­and many monsters, no doubt, not limited to the yetis.

But Wulf­gar thought that this monster he had spotted in the crevice between the boulders across the way was indeed a yeti, for the four-­toed tracks of the heavy creature that had led him here were unmistakable and almost unique to the hulking creatures.

“I’ll consider it, but not for this one,” he said, and Breezy gave a low growl. “There are too many hidey-­holes about, perhaps concealing other yetis. We must be done with this fight quickly.”

“Together, then.”

Wulf­gar shook his head and shuffled uneasily. “Too many caves and shallows.” He glanced back the way they had come, and it seemed clear to Breezy that he was thinking of retreating.

If there are two, we can defeat them,” Breezy insisted. “If there are three, I will call in a friend.”

“And if there are four?”

“We fight harder,” the young woman said with an impish grin. She couldn’t let him change his mind and turn them about. She just couldn’t. She needed this, and not simply as a training exercise for her considerable fighting skills—­indeed, she would battle here with weapons that would not be available to her when she fought for the rank of Master of Dragons. What she needed was the experience of the stress, the very edge of catastrophe, the forced movements and reactions with her life on the line.

For even though her physical life would not be in great jeopardy in her coming trial, her identity, her pride, her growing sense of independence surely would.

Wulf­gar shook his head, but he was looking back at the dark crevice ahead, his warhammer Aegis-­fang in hand, his fingers flexing eagerly.

“If I tell you to run, just run,” he whispered.

“Of course.” Breezy stared at him and sensed his uneasiness. There was evil about—­she could feel it, too, a quiet hush. Too quiet.

But she wanted her fight.

She had watched Wulf­gar put that powerful warhammer to swift and deadly use, dispatching each of the three yetis they had come upon in their earlier days out from Ten-­Towns with seeming ease.

There was more than one here, she believed.

And hoped.

“Don’t shoot me in the back,” Wulf­gar said, not turning to regard her and instead beginning a low skulk ­toward the pair of giant boulders. He veered to the left, the northernmost giant stone and the one with the most open ground around it.

Breezy nodded knowingly. If others were coming, they would be farther from him, emerging from the larger boulder tumbles south of their position, giving Wulf­gar and her a fine head start. She didn’t want to flee, but she understood and appreciated the caution. Despite her earlier declaration, Breezy understood the truth of their enemies. Tundra yetis were huge beasts, resembling large white-­and-­light-­brown gorillas, but more upright, like a gnoll. They had huge curving claws on ten fingers and smaller, thicker triangular daggers on the four toes of each foot. Their flat apish faces were dominated by huge mouths with long, massive canines. As much as she said she wanted to fight one, Breezy understood that it was nothing to be trite about. Tundra yetis were all muscle and natural weapons, which they regularly and efficiently put to deadly use.

Wulf­gar stopped and turned about. “They aren’t animals,” he said to Breezy, perhaps the tenth time he’d told her that on this hunting excursion.

Breezy nodded. She understood his emphasis, as she had made it quite clear to him that she had no desire to hunt ani…