C A Golden

Book One: The Unseelie Fight Club

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A Warning Reader, before you turn the page: There are towers in this country that were built on blood, and some of them remember. If you shelter in a ruin and hear iron boots on the stair, do not wait to see who wears them. Do not fight him. You cannot win, and he would like you to try. What you are holding is a story. Probably. Speak the oath. Then read on. The Oath of Protection By rowan-tree and red thread, Make the witches tyne their speed. I'll not bleed for the Redcap's hat, I'll not fight where the iron boots clatter. If he comes to the door of my reading, I'll say the words my Gran gave me: Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night. Good Neighbours, I mean you no harm. Pass me by. Some towers remember the blood they were built on.Rule one: you don't talk about the Vault.Rule two: you don't stop until he says so.Rule three: never look at the old man's boots.Kelvin Armstrong has never lived anywhere but his Gran's house in Liddesdale. Now he's at Kingshaugh University — old stone, old money, and bills Gran Effie can't pay. So when an invitation slides under his door to an underground fight club beneath the ruined tower at the heart of campus, he goes. Two hundred pounds a night. Patch up the fighters. Keep your head down.But the fights are getting worse. Students are turning up in the woods with wounds no fist could make. And the old groundskeeper who takes the money has teeth too long for his mouth, iron on his boots, and a cap that is always, always wet.Kelvin grew up on Gran's stories of the Redcap — the Border goblin who haunts towers raised on blood. He always believed they were just stories.Now, with folklore student Eilidh Stewart and sceptical archaeologist Jaz Gill, he has until the next fight night to prove they aren't. Because the thing beneath Kingshaugh is hungry.And it already knows Kelvin's name.

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