The Merciless

During a frantic escape across the wild swamp of the Desolates, Nyctris and her lover, the escaped slave Hallum, find a more dangerous land than the one they left in Hamiada. After a lifetime in luxury as the daughter of a high-ranking senator, the travel is hard on Nyctris. Before breaking Hallum from her father's dungeon she had never even left the walled city of her homeland. But it is the burden of her secret that hurts the most.

Nyctris builds the courage to finally tell Hallum everything, even though it could mean losing him, but she is violently interrupted. Goblins, a cross between thinking man and ravenous beast, swarm the camp under the cover of night. While not a soldier by nature, Nyctris defends herself using the skills of her warrior culture. Grievously wounded, she escapes but only because Hallum buys her the chance with the loss of his newfound freedom. He screams for her to leave, and to her shame she does.

Lost and alone, Nyctris is found and nursed back to health in the ruins of a dead village. It is from her saviors she learns the full horror of Hallum's imprisonment. To the goblins, humans are nothing but livestock. The slaves are either gelded to break their spirit or unlucky enough to be kept whole and abused as breeders. It is a short life full of humiliation and agony. The precious few who escape the goblin slave pens never come back whole. They all lose parts of their bodies and minds in the daily struggle for survival. He could have escaped that night in the Desolates but instead he chose to save her. And she had let him. Nyctris's only desire, her obsession, is to find a way to release Hallum in time.

But gathering support in a land filled with cowards is difficult. War with the goblins ravaged the New Haven and Dwarven nations a decade before. Now a fragile treaty holds the goblins to the swamps, a treaty few are willing to risk even for family, much less a stranger.

But those brave few do exist, even if they do have their own agendas. Some seek redemption, some want to rescue their countrymen, while others only want wealth. To find and win them over Nyctris will do things she never imagined existed while growing up in her life of privilege.

She will have to abandon all mercy to release Hallum. But what does it mean to truly be without mercy? And will the man she fights to save be the Hallum she remembers?