"I can't get his face out of my head," Nina grabbed her knees and cried. "I wouldn't either," Kaz said, "No, not when he died. For the last two weeks I've seen him. In Hell. The plaything of... a Man in Black." She gulped. "What?" "Matthias was a man of his faith, how could he go to Hell," she said to herself. "The man. He reminded me of the Darkling." A story about Kaz pulling off the greatest heist ever. Stealing a soul from the afterlife.

It was not that he did not know how to love: he did, terribly much. But love was weakness, so he learnt to hide it. Especially from the ones he loved.

Before the shadow fold, before the black heretic, there was a princess and her court. Fixing the rift between the west and the east will not be easy for her court, and stopping the creation of the fold will be even more difficult.