Are You Ready for FIRST LIGHT?

An all new contemporary romantic fantasy series from Elizabeth Hunter!

In the Shadowlands, strangers wear familiar faces, myths are reality, and lies hide behind the most beautiful stories.

Carys Morgan traveled to Scotland in search of her missing boyfriend, only to find herself lost in an alternate dimension where magic infuses the land, myths are reality, and Carys wields power that no one can explain.

Guided and protected by a surly human blacksmith and a shapeshifting dragon, Carys discovers that she has an unexpected tie to the Shadowlands no one can explain, and her life has been shaped by a world running parallel to her own reality. 

Secrets lurk in every corner and Carys must decide if she wants to stay in a dimension where magic welcomes her, but strangers want her dead.

First Light is the introduction to an all new contemporary romantic fantasy series from eleven-time USA Today bestselling author Elizabeth Hunter.

I am thrilled to announce the beginning of an all new romantic fantasy series! First Light is the introduction to the Shadowlands series, an all new world of portal fantasy where an alternate magical dimension exists parallel to our own. It’s a world of new and old myths, scheming fae, temperamental dragons, elusive unicorns, and magical creatures of every kind. The first book is set in modern day Scotland, but trust me, this world-building is anything but familiar.

I don’t have a cover quite yet, but the book is already in editing and I’ll have a preorder soon. Until then, I hope you enjoy this exclusive preview of FIRST LIGHT.

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FIRST LIGHT: Chapter One

Carys Morgan felt like she was going to shave off the left side of her car. “This was such a bad idea.”

“Going to Scotland to look for your missing boyfriend?” Kiersten asked over the speakerphone. “Or deciding to drive?”

“The driving part!” A dark hedgerow seemed to rise up in front of her. Carys jammed on the brakes and the car came to a stop.

A thin man emerged from the hedgerow, cocked his head at her, and pulled his cap down lower over his face. Then he loped across the field, stepping over a low stone wall that bordered a green pasture before he disappeared into a copse of leafless hawthorn trees dotted with bright red berries.

She blinked and the thin man was gone.

What was she doing? She slowly guided her car back into the lane. This was the worst idea in her twenty-nine years of life on this planet. This was such a bad idea.

And she couldn’t stop now.

“I don’t think we should be talking to her while she’s trying to navigate the wrong side of the road.” Her best friend Laura was also on the call. “Mostly I’m feeling guilty that neither of us went with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The road after the curve widened, and Carys’s heartbeat slowed to a non-fatal rate. “Both of you have lives and jobs and aren’t insane. I am a mentally unbalanced mythology professor whose boyfriend disappeared.”

“You’re not mentally unbalanced. And you’ve been a lot better in the last few months.”

Ever since she met Lachlan, which was why she had to figure out what the hell was going on. She’d taken a leave of absence from work when her depression dragged her down, but she was slowly crawling back from it. And then…

And then.

“I’m doing the right thing, right?”

“Yes.” Both of her friends spoke at once.

“We know Lachlan,” Laura said. “Something very weird is going on. He would not just have left you without a word. He didn’t call. Didn’t text.”

“He didn’t even take his car,” Kiersten added. “Something is obviously wrong.”

“Right.” Carys nodded. Right. She knew this. 

Even though the police in her small town on the Northern California coast seemed to think she was a jilted girlfriend with too much time on her hands, she knew that something horrible had happened to her boyfriend, and she wasn’t going to ignore it.

“Did you ever get Lachlan’s brother on the phone?” Kiersten asked. “Maybe if he saw a UK number he’d pick up.”

“She still has her American phone,” Laura said.

“Oh right.”

“His brother is avoiding my calls,” Carys said. “I got through one time, asked for Lachlan, and the man hung up on me. I called back and no answer.”

No matter how many times she told the Baywood police that something strange had happened to Lachlan, they said there was nothing to investigate. Some of her boyfriend’s clothes were missing and she and Lachlan had only been together for four months. That was proof enough for the police that her boyfriend had taken off and just hadn’t bothered breaking up with Carys before he left.

“He might be as worried as you are,” Kiersten said.

“I don’t think they’re very close,” Carys said. “But I mean… yeah. He’d have to be worried, right?”

She swerved and nearly hit a tractor that was coming up the road. “These roads are insanely narrow.”

Along with his car, Lachlan had left his passport, his guitar, his papers from the lawyer who was trying to get him a visa extension. He’d left an unfinished book on the bedside table and a massive hole in her life. 

Carys was going to find out what happened.

Even if it did look like she was the unhinged ex-girlfriend. 

“Murray Smithworks is on this road.” Carys looked for numbers when she passed houses on the country lane, but nothing seemed to be marked. “How are you supposed to find anything in this country?”

“Lachlan’s brother is a blacksmith? I didn’t know they had those anymore.”

“It’s some kind of family business that Lachlan used to work at. I have a feeling that that’s part of why he left home.”

I’m a disgustingly wealthy prince who’s run away from home for a bit to enjoy being unemployed. It was what he’d told her the first time he met. 

He had struck up a conversation about George MacDonald fairy tales at Redwood Books while she was shopping. He was charming and handsome, and she fell for all of it. There were hints of family money, but he didn’t mention it more than the joke about being a prince. He was smart and curious and kind.

He was almost too good to be true, except that he wasn’t. Lachlan had become Carys’s lifeline during her recovery from depression. He was bright and caring, and he loved her friends.

“Lachlan is a musician,” Laura said. “Not a blacksmith. They should respect that.”

“They should respect numbering houses,” Carys muttered.

“What do you see?” Kiersten asked.

Carys kept her speed low and looked around the grey and green Scottish landscape. “Trees with no leaves. Green hills. And cows.”

“Fuzzy cows?”

“Oh my God, Kiersten, enough with the fuzzy cows.”

“They’re so adorable though.”

“Wait.” Carys spotted a crooked red sign in the distance. “I see something that has Murray on it. I think.”

She pulled closer and saw that it wasn’t Murray Smithworks, but it was Murray Garden Center. “Maybe it belongs to a cousin or something. It’s a garden center, but the name is the same. I think I’m on the right track.”

“Okay, do you want to keep us on the call with you?”

“I think I’m okay now.”

“Remember,” Laura said. “You’re not insane. You know Lachlan and something happened to him. He would not have left without talking to you.”

The road curved again, a sinuous S that rose over a hill, then dropped down into a picturesque green valley blanketed by bare trees and green hills. On the slope of the hill in the distance, Carys could just make out something that looked like a stone circle. 

It was a real-life version of one of her mother’s fantasy watercolors, and Carys wished more than anything that she was visiting Scotland for the first time with Lachlan. They could take their time, explore his childhood haunts, and she could see in person some of the mythology she’d spent her life studying in books.

And Lachlan could do the driving.

A car horn dragged her attention from the stone circle in the distance and back to the road where a small delivery truck—a lorry—was pulling out into the lane and right into Carys’s way.

She swerved to the left and raised a hand in apology, but as soon as she passed the truck she realized where the truck was coming from.

Murray Smithworks.

The sign was in faded paint on the large stone barn behind the stone wall where the truck had come from.

Carys found a place to turn around, then slowly drove back to the business that the Murray family owned. She turned left into the yard surrounded by a grey stone wall, then directed her small rental car toward a low building that appeared to be an office.

She parked and took a deep breath before she sent a quick text to Laura and Kiersten.

Found it. Wish me luck.

Kiersten: Good luck.

Laura: Don’t let him brush you off.

Carys opened her car door and stepped out into the cool Scottish morning. The sky was overcast, but it didn’t look like it was going to rain, and the temperature was a chilly forty degrees, fairly close to what Baywood had been when she left home.

Experiencing the weather in Lachlan’s childhood home made Carys realize why he’d taken the weather on the North Coast in stride. It wasn’t as foggy as Baywood, but the climate was remarkably similar.

She walked to the old wooden door with peeling paint and a small plaque that read OFFICE. She knocked, then cracked the door open. “Hello?”

“Just a moment, dear!” A friendly voice called from the back. “Just a wee moment.”

A “wee moment” later, a round woman with curly hair and a rosy face walked from the hall at the back of the office. “These boys.” She sighed. “Can’t fill out a sales order to save their life.” She settled at a large desk with a computer and two different phones. “How can I help you, dear? If you’re looking for the garden store, it’s just down the lane and all the metalworks are there. We don’t sell any directly here at the smith works; this area is for restoration projects, construction and the like.”

Carys raised a hand. “Oh, I’m not here for garden… things. I’m looking for Duncan Murray.”

The woman cocked her head. “American? And you’re looking for Duncan, are you?”

“Yes, Duncan Murray. He’s the owner here, right?”

“He surely is, but he doesn’t receive guests at work most days.” She smiled and rose, then her smile fell. “You’re not a reporter or anything like that, are you?”

“No.” She found herself reluctant to volunteer information. “Just a friend of a friend.”

“Of course, dear.” The woman’s smile returned. “And your name?”

Oh shit. She supposed she had to give the woman something. “Carys.”

“Lovely name.” The woman beamed. “I’ll see if I can find the man.”

Moments after the woman walked back into what Carys assumed was the workshop, a burly man came storming down the hallway. He froze for a moment, staring at Carys, and his mouth dropped open.

So did hers. “Lachlan?”

He wasn’t Lachlan. She knew he wasn’t, but this man was her boyfriend’s mirror image. He was rougher around the edges, his hair was shorter, and he had a beard you couldn’t grow in less than a month. His hair was the same reddish brown as Lachlan’s and his eyes were just as green, but his shoulders were thick with muscle and his arms were massive.

Duncan Murray wasn’t only Lachlan’s brother—he was his identical twin.

“You.” The man’s voice was low and rough. “How—?”

“I’m Carys Morgan.” She boldly stuck out her hand. “I’m Lachlan’s girlfriend from California and I need you to tell me where the hell your brother is.”

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First Light

Copyright, 2023, Elizabeth Hunter

All rights reserved.