Casimir Drowsky had been alive one hundred and fifty years, at least as far as he remembered. But who knew how long he’d lived before? He couldn’t say. His first memories were of waking on a battlefield during the Queens War—his clothes tattered and covered in blood—and then Ighten soldiers threw him in the dungeon far beneath their gleaming shore-side castle. They’d offered him no explanation. No trial. Nothing. Leaving him to be forgotten—a man without a past or a future—and for fifty years he’d lived in the dark until escaping.
Casimir Drowsky wasn’t even his name. He’d stolen it. He’d taken Casimir from his cellmate, who lasted two weeks in Ighten’s prison before being executed for murder. Drowsky, he’d borrowed from a merchant in passing.
Now, it seemed, he’d steal a job.
Father Olrin Peeble dusted an ornamental altar to Thar—the God of Light and Life, and the patron god of Ighten—while humming a hymn to himself. Casimir sat in an empty back pew. The church was old, all sharp carved stone, weathered and chipped. The ceiling stretched two stories high, covered in wooden rib vaults and slate tiles in need of repairing. Detailed stained-glass windows stretched floor to ceiling in height, with broken panes replaced by rippled clear glass. The missing pieces had caused one of Thar’s perfect, angular jaws to go missing.
Casimir suspected this hovel to be one of the oldest churches in Ighten, and it sat forgotten in a minuscule town called Whitehall, a half-day's ride south of Ighten’s border with Alykith.
“Are you looking for guidance, my son?” asked the priest without ceasing his busywork. He’d left Casimir alone when he entered, continuing his dusting, likely hoping Casimir would go away on his own and leave him without further work to do. “Just passing through?”
Casimir stretched his weary legs, clasping his hands in his lap as he settled further into the pew. “Has Thar ever spoken to you, Father?”
“Of course,” said Father Peeble. “All the time.”
“Does he ever give you dreams? Visions?”
“Yes.”
“What do they mean?”
Father Peeble stopped his dusting and turned. He wore old green robes with a strip of gold cloth bunched like a scarf around his neck. Casimir would dress better.
“Are you having dreams, my son?”
Casimir stiffened. For a moment, he saw ghastly visions of beasts emerging from darkness. He saw blood and bone and agony, and it called to him. A voice, a longing, a need...
“I dreamed of this church,” said Casimir as he stood and stepped toward the altar, turning and facing the priest.
“Then Thar has led you here.” Father Peeble gripped his shoulder, the kind of touch Casimir assumed a father might place on a son.
He frowned. “Something has… Though, I don’t think it’s Thar.”
Father Peeble’s head tilted in the confused way most people looked at Casimir as he killed them. He hated killing, but it was the easiest way to get what he needed when he needed it.
Father Peeble’s eyes widened, and he looked down at the dagger buried in his gut. Casimir only vaguely remembered driving it in. The priest crumpled to the ground at his feet, gasping and coughing and begging for his god.
“I don’t think Thar listens,” said Casimir, kneeling and running his hands over the top of the priest’s head. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll tend to your flock until a God that listens comes along.”
When the priest was dead, Casimir dragged him out back to a patch of grass near the forest’s edge. A shadow moved and warped and formed into a physical being standing seven feet in height, with great gold horns swooping either side of its head.
“Jyn,” said Casimir. “Make a spectacle, would you?”
Jyn smiled. His charcoal skin glinted in the faint warm light falling through the open church door. Gold eyes shimmered with amusement. Jyn brushed a lock of black hair behind his pointed ear and stooped to grab the priest’s body.
* * *
With Whitehall being so close to Alykith, a land ensnared by dark magic, strange and evil things happened there in varying frequency. Now and then, untethered Shadows or dark sorcerers found their way over the border and into town limits.
So, when the residents of Whitehall woke to find their priest in several indiscernible pieces at the edge of town, they were not surprised. However horrifying, it wasn’t rare to find someone half-devoured after defying curfew, and Father Peeble was known to sleepwalk.
A day later, Father Casimir Drowsky arrived. Some remarked it seemed too soon for the Church of Thar to send another priest, but they welcomed him. They couldn’t afford to be suspicious, and if anyone needed the blessings of Thar, it was Whitehall.
OF SILVER AND SIN by Kaytalin Platt releases August 20th.
It is the first in a dark fantasy romance duology. You can pre-order digital copies through Amazon, or physical copies including character art and scene illustrations through the author’s website.