Today, we’re thrilled to share an excerpt from the sequel to bestselling and Waterstones Fantasy Book of the Month Godkiller, SUNBRINGER by Hannah Kaner.

Before we dive into the excerpt, let’s check out the official blurb:

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth and save her friends, but gods cannot be destroyed so easily – and neither can godkillers.

Reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, seek answers to the true nature of their bond. The secrets they uncover could determine the outcome of the war.

Meanwhile, Elogast, no longer a loyal knight of King Arren, has been charged with destroying the man he once called friend. The king vowed to eradicate all gods, but has now entered into an unholy pact with the most dangerous of them all.

The kingdom is on the brink of destruction. What will they each sacrifice to save it?

Sunbringer is expected for release from HarperVoyager on the 15th February. You can pick up your copy from Booskhop.org

Excerpt

For the second time in her life, Kissen woke in the arms of the sea god. 

Everything hurt. The cut on her shoulder, the burns on her right leg where her half-melted prosthesis had seared her skin. The nicks, scratches, and aches of long weeks of fitful nights and being hunted through the wild lands. Her body was keeping score of its battles. 

But now all was quiet save for the rush and breath of waves striking stone, dragging chiming pebbles and shells out, inch by inch, into the deep. It had been so long since she had heard the sound of this particular shore. 

She opened her eyes with a snap. Above her, the sea god of her childhood looked out to the east, contemplating the water. Behind him, the sky was dark with evening and potential thunder. 

‘Fuck,’ Kissen hissed, tipping herself out of Osidisen’s embrace and landing in an ungainly heap on the rocky ground. This shore was as she remembered it, though she had not seen it in almost fourteen years: filled with black stone rising and crumbling like an empire’s ruins. The cliffs surrounding them loomed high and dark, circled by cormorants. 

Osidisen looked down. Here he had brought her after the fire god Hseth had destroyed her family, broken, orphaned and burned. His holy cove, known to all the village as the place the sea god would take his rest. Kissen touched her chest where she had carried 

the wish her father had made for her: his life for her life. The writing had turned from dark to light, the promise fulfilled, her father’s life gone. 

‘Why did you bring me back here, rat-drowner?’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘I asked you to save me, not drag me back to nowhere.’ This was leagues from the Trade Sea where she had fallen from Blenraden’s shrines. Inevitably, she found her eyes drawn to the black cliffs north of the bay. There, as a child, she would have seen the struts of her village’s houses clinging to the edge, shaken by the wind and spray of the sea. No more. The cliff had fallen, the houses too. The village was gone. 

‘It might occur to you,’ said Osidisen quietly, ‘not to insult a god on his own land.’ 

‘It might occur to you that I don’t give a shit.’ 

She struggled to her feet, trying not to look at her warped and twisted prosthesis. She could sense the ache of her missing right limb below the knee. Phantom pain; her calf, shin, and ankle squeezed in a bone-splintering vice of agony. And so she should be in pain; if the leg hadn’t been metal Hseth would have burned her through to the bone. But she wouldn’t look at it. Not yet. She had to convince herself that it was still her leg, and it would still hold her, or she would crash to the ground. 

‘Tell me why,’ Kissen demanded. She didn’t want to be here, so close to her childhood pain. What would her still living family think of her disappearance? Her friends? Elo and Inara? 

They would think she was dead. Her heart knotted in her chest, tightening her lungs. How could she tell them she was alive? She was weeks away from home on foot, and in a land whose god she had just killed. 

‘The “why” is a warning,’ said Osidisen. His face drifted as he spoke, turning from a rush of water and a beard of foam into something more human. His skin hardened into flesh, the froth turning to grey-and-white strands of hair, though his body remained a cloak of waves, eating the light where it touched. A warning? This was the god who had watched her steps as a child, who helped her find good pools of cockles, who had helped her swim through stormy waters. What warning could he have for her? ‘An obligation,’ he added.

Kissen shook her head. His love had made her family a target, a sacrifice to Hseth. She wanted nothing from him. ‘You have fulfilled my father’s wish,’ she said through a scowl. ‘The promise that tied us is done.’ 

Osidisen laughed, his beard foaming and curling as he chuckled, disappearing further into the water. His hair ran green, turning into fronds of seaweed, then returned again. The light of the setting sun was golden, dancing over the foam of the waves until it met the purpling cloud of an incoming storm. She had been there for a whole day. 

‘You waited half your little life to let me fulfil your father’s sacrifice,’ the god said. ‘Then you deliver me another boon.’ 

Kissen winced. 

‘The fire god. Hseth,’ Osidisen continued. ‘She drove me out of these lands and my peoples’ hearts, to live on the secret wishes of fishwives and their folk. You gave her death to me—’ 

‘It was not for you,’ said Kissen through gritted teeth. It was for Inara, for Elogast. For her family. And herself. 

‘This warning is what I will pay for it.’ 

It did not matter to him, her intention, only what was. She cursed under her breath. ‘You give me a warning, then what?’ she said. ‘Then you leave me here again? Demand another gift to take me home? What will it be this time? My finger? An eye?’ 

‘I swear to take you to those shores you now call home once the warning is done,’ said Osidisen dismissively, as if he had not brought her half the world away. ‘These are the warnings of the wild, of the water. You have had them before, but you did not understand them.’ 

When Middren falls to the gods, your kind will be the first to die.

The warning of a nothing-god rose to her mind. A river spirit too big for its little pond had paid her warning with her last breath. 

‘And I know,’ Osidisen continued, his gaze boring into her, as if searching for her soul, ‘you would not believe a god’s warning, only your own eyes.’ 

There was movement out on the water; ships drifting under the storm clouds and a low veil of rain, some from the south, some from the north. Osidisen ignored them, his focus on Kissen. If he wished, he could press his voice inside her mind, impress 

his will on her and fill her thoughts with terror and drowning. Weakened as he was, he was still an old, half-wild god with many shrines. She ran a tongue over her gold tooth, then shifted to sit warily on the ground. Of all her weapons, only her cutlass was left, its briddite blade perhaps enough to sting Osidisen if he decided to crush her. Even the leather gloves she still wore, that she had used to drag Hseth down to the water, had been torn to rags, the briddite plates gone. She was at a disadvantage, and she didn’t like it. 

‘Then what is my warning, sea god?’ 

‘War will come with summer,’ said Osidisen, ‘and Talicia will bring it.’

Sunbringer is expected for release from HarperVoyager on the 15th February. You can pick up your copy from Booskhop.org