A Ruined Realms Intermezzo

Manu and Joana

Lisbon, 1977. A woman leaves her ten-year-old son at the gate of the Academy of the Seventh Hill of Orin and tells him she’ll be away a little while.

It has to be like this for now.

Within weeks, she is a Vampire. When she finally comes back, he has learned to grow up without her. Still, for a while, they find their way back to each other. Until, terrified he will end up like his father, she takes his future into her own hands.

He leaves Lisbon and makes sure no one there can ever find him.

For fifty-one years, Joana Mendes has been the Stewardess’s eyes, her devoted Progeny and protector. She has kept Eve Valarion’s secrets better than her own. At Palácio da Pena, she carried a bloodied and burned Sebastião to safety on her shoulders. What happened afterwards has left her questioning the only person she has always fully trusted.

Bast told her to open her eyes. She’s starting to.

On New Year’s Eve, Joana comes home to Lisbon bleeding, hungry and uncertain whether the Maker she has served for half a century will offer her refuge.

That same night in Greenwich, while London sets the sky on fire, a Forge Master called Manu sharpens a dagger that died with the woman who carried it. He heals when it suits him. He sees things he’d rather not. Behind a chest of drawers in his room, a plastic bag of old letters holds the life he left behind and the people he has loved and lost.

When Joana realises there is no longer a place for her in Lisbon, she walks away.

She has no idea she is about to walk into Manu’s world.

A story about the difference between protecting someone and taking their choices away.

Coming next

The Ruined Realms intermezzi are complete stories set between the main novels. Manu and Joana is the first.