Title: Moon's Shadow
Series: Duskblade, Book Two
Author: Shannon Blair
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 12/23/2025
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 354
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy, elves, family, spies, sexual discovery, royalty, established relationship, revenge, betrayal, intrigue, coming out
Moranthus and Gerrick return to Dawn’s Gate in hopes of a happy homecoming, but Moranthus’s past as a duskblade stands in the way of his future. When a delegation from his native Moonridge pays a surprise visit to Dawn’s Gate’s court, Moranthus is enlisted as a guard for Prince Orthenn: a man he once tried to kidnap. With Gerrick still employed as Orthenn’s double, Moranthus welcomes the opportunity to shield his lover from harm alongside the prince he protects. Then, a familiar face reappears and calls his loyalties into question once again.
Gerrick, struggling to balance his duty with his love for Moranthus and the young daughter he’s only just returned to, hesitates to work alongside his lover. With his heart divided, he must find a way to reconcile his authentic self with his work as a false prince—all while trying to expose a suspected traitor in Dawn’s Gate’s court.
Meanwhile, in Moonridge, Matriarch Ilendra faces the consequences of her failed plot against Prince Orthenn. As she scrambles to save her reputation, both a new suitor and an old flame compete for her already divided attentions while her estranged half-brother makes an unexpected reappearance in her social sphere. With her personal affairs now as treacherous as her court, Ilendra must choose her allies carefully—or risk losing both her reign and her life.
Moon’s Shadow
Shannon Blair © 2025
All Rights Reserved
From the Prologue
It was not yet dawn. The bone-chilling winds that made Moonridge’s winters so infamously harsh screamed across the sea ice of Aurora’s harbor like a host of vengeful dead. Even tucked away inside her study, shielded by the fabled impregnable walls of Aurora’s palace and layers of furs, Ilendra could feel their icy bite. She should be in bed at this hour, waiting for the sun to rise and blunt the edge of winter’s chill. Instead, she sat in a hard-backed chair designed more for its regal appearance than its comfort, burning through precious firewood and candles as she pored over the contents of the most recent missive to reach her desk.
As Moonridge’s reigning Matriarch, she would be within her rights to leave the matter until morning and see to it that the courier responsible for disturbing her rest received a sharp reprimand for rousing her at this hour. But she had assumed a letter delivered in the dead of night by a goblin courier who had no business traveling so far into elven lands deserved her immediate attention. She had assumed correctly.
The courier’s letter was almost unnecessary. The red braid it contained was a message in itself. Ilendra eyed the length of hair coiled around her hand as though it were a viper poised to strike. It shone in the firelight like blood welling from a fresh wound. A fitting comparison, when she took the severed braid’s meaning into account. A meaning that she understood all too well.
Betrayal.
The image of her father as she’d last seen him surfaced, unwelcome and unbidden, from the depths of her mind. Anguish shining in his violet eyes like unshed tears as he dragged a razor across his throat, washing away any questions surrounding the legitimacy of Ilendra’s ascension to Moonridge’s throne with the rushing torrent of his lifeblood. Ten years later, Ilendra could still hear the soft gurgle of his dying breath as his features went slack and his eyes grew vacant. The soft thud of his body crumpling almost gracefully to the floor, as composed in death as he’d been in life. Exactly as an elven Patriarch should be. And exactly as Ilendra strove to conduct herself as Moonridge’s new Matriarch.
Sparing the life of her father’s lover, Moranthus, had been a mistake. In the wake of her father’s death, his declaration of loyalty to her had seemed genuine. But it had been an act of foolish weakness to believe such loyalty could last when Ilendra was responsible for the death of a man he’d been so utterly infatuated with. The moment Ilendra set him to a task of any real significance—his long-awaited chance to escape the shame of his unseemly involvement with a man above his station—Moranthus had turned on her, reducing years of immaculate planning to a smoldering ruin of folly.
A light, hesitant knock sounded on the door. Avalanche, the hulking ice bear who served Ilendra as a symbol of office, loyal mount, and steadfast companion, raised his head off his front paws and yawned. He tilted his head in curiosity as he regarded the source of the noise from his vantage point beside the ornamental fireplace at Ilendra’s back. His glossy, white coat glimmered like fresh snow in the firelight, interrupted only by the ink blots of his eyes, nose, and paws. Beneath that soft fur was a beast strong enough to kill a grown elf with a single swipe of his paw, each foot tipped with finger-long claws and jaws lined with dagger-sharp teeth. With such a stalwart guardian by her side, Ilendra hardly had need of the two frostguards posted outside her door, standing still as living statues in their slate-gray plate armor, their faces rendered expressionless by the blank visors of their helmets.
“Enter,” Ilendra called out, her voice clear and sharp. She ran a hand over her jet-black hair, woven into an eleven-strand Matriarch’s braid. As usual, not a single hair was out of place. She allowed herself a small hum of satisfaction at the knowledge. Unlike her fool half-brothers, she hadn’t been lucky enough to inherit her father’s royal-white hair—and, much to the chagrin of her advisors, had refused to have her hair powdered or magicked white to conform to her people’s expectations of what a Matriarch should look like—but at least she knew how to conduct herself with proper decorum. And speaking of fool half-brothers…
The door to her study swung open on well-oiled hinges. Corendin, the younger of their late father’s legitimate sons, stepped into Ilendra’s study, gray eyes still bleary from sleep. Still, there was no denying the concern Ilendra saw reflected in them, or the way his dusky lavender skin looked a touch paler than usual. Receiving a summons from his Matriarch at such an early hour and with so little notice had unnerved him.
And he had wasted little time tending to his appearance before answering her. He wore his ice-white hair draped over his shoulder in a loose, dismal attempt at the nine-strand nobleman’s braid that he was lucky to still be wearing. His elder brother, Vandorys, was living a life of exile in the goblin territories after refusing to accept Ilendra as his new Matriarch. Corendin’s more biddable temperament had spared him from sharing his brother’s fate.
Avalanche sniffed at the air as Corendin approached Ilendra’s desk, the beginnings of a growl rumbling in his chest. Corendin tensed at the sight of him and breathed a visible sigh of relief when Avalanche rested his head on his paws with a satisfied huff a moment later.
Corendin knelt before Ilendra, head respectfully inclined as he asked, “What is required of me, Matriarch?” His voice was low and soft but filled the room as effectively as if he had shouted all the same—almost an exact match for the way their father had spoken. The similarity never failed to send a chill down Ilendra’s spine. “I hope my actions have not displeased you.”
“They have not.” Ilendra fought to keep her exasperation at his groveling from showing as she spoke. It troubled her to see Corendin still so fearful of her a full decade after her ascension and his brother’s exile. A part of her wanted nothing more than to embrace him as the sibling he had always been to her and reassure him that she bore him no ill will. But to make such assurances was to undermine her own authority and diminish the gravity of his brother’s refusal to accept his new place in the hierarchy of Moonridge’s nobility. Surely, he understood that. “You may rise. A matter has been brought to my attention on which I would seek your counsel.” And a source of comfort in the wake of such an unexpected betrayal, though she could not say so aloud.
Corendin rose, eyebrows raised in a mix of surprise and curiosity as he regarded her with eyes that, for the first time in the last decade, were neither guarded nor wary. “Of course, Ilen—” He caught himself, pretending to clear his throat before he continued. “—Matriarch. How may I be of assistance?”
Ilendra shifted her gaze to her study’s door, shut tight behind Corendin by her frostguards the moment his feet had passed its threshold. It was thick enough to prevent her voice from reaching her frostguards’ ears, so long as she did not shout. And her frostguards were disciplined enough not to spread news of her conversations to unworthy ears even if they did overhear her. This was as close to a chance to speak freely as she could get as Moonridge’s Matriarch. “‘Ilendra’ is more than adequate in this context.”
“Very well, Ilendra.” A ghost of a smile lightened Corendin’s features. “If I may ask, why is it that this matter caused you to seek my counsel? Surely your advisors are better suited to such a task?”
Because her advisors would question why she had involved Moranthus in the matter instead of leaving it in the more trustworthy and capable hands of her frostguards. Why she had promised her father’s disgraced and unsuitable lover a pardon she had no intention of granting him as a reward for completing a mission she’d expected him to fail. And she was not yet ready to face their scorn and judgmental stares.
“Because it is, to a certain degree, a family matter.” And Corendin was the only family she had left. Her mother had not spoken to her since her father’s death, justifying herself by claiming she lacked the mental fortitude to abide the presence of the woman responsible for the death of the man she had loved. Even if that woman was her own daughter.
“I see. Has there been news of Vandorys, then?” Corendin’s expression looked almost hopeful. Ilendra chose not to hold it against him for the moment.
“No, and for that, we should count ourselves grateful. This matter concerns Moranthus.”
Corendin’s eyes drifted to the braided length of red hair still wound around Ilendra’s hand. “You’ve exiled him?”
“He chose exile for himself as the penalty for an act of treason.”
“Are you certain? That seems unlike him.” Corendin’s brow furrowed. He doubted her. Of course he did. He hadn’t shared Ilendra’s distaste for their father’s base-born lover, even going so far as to attempt to intercede on Moranthus’s behalf ten years ago, when Ilendra had sentenced him to half-exile.
It wasn’t his mother who had been disgraced by their father’s decision to set her aside for a piece of trash he’d plucked out of the gutter, after all. It wasn’t his future that had been rendered uncertain by their father’s decision to sever the bond that served as his only public means of including his illegitimate daughter in his family line. It wasn’t him who’d been forced to stage a coup against his beloved father in order to preserve his suddenly precarious political standing and forcefully lay claim to a throne that should have been freely given to him.
Shannon Blair is a fantasy author with a fondness for elves, goblins, and general otherworldly goodness. Their love of fiction and storytelling drove them to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis University, where a short writing exercise spiraled out of control and eventually became their first novel. When they aren’t on a quest to make the fantasy genre a more LGBTQA-friendly place, Shannon can be found inventing whimsical backstories for the colorful crafts and vendors at the craft market where they work. They live on the outskirts of the Denver metroplex with their partner and two spoiled rotten cats.
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