Cast in Shadow

Seven years earlier, Kaylin escaped Nightshade, a district where violence was part of everyday life, convinced that something was hunting her. Children were being killed there, and each victim carried the same strange markings that had quietly appeared on her own skin. Since then she has taught herself to read, mastered combat, and joined the Hawks, the officers who patrol and police Elantra. Among the winged Aerians and the immortal Barrani, she has built a life far from the streets where she grew up.

Now children are dying again, and the killings follow a pattern that looks grimly familiar. Kaylin is sent back to Nightshade to work with a partner she has good reason to distrust. A Dragon Lord will accompany her, and she will carry a device meant to restrain her magic, a power no other human possesses. Her assignment is straightforward: track down the killer and end the murders, all while staying alive around people who insist they are on her side.

Cast in Shadow is the first novel in Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra, a fantasy series set in a magical city.