Breathe, My Shadow — Storm Constantine

Breathe My Shadow is a stand-alone novel, set in Storm Constantine's Wraeththu Mythos.

Seladris believes he carries a curse making him a danger to any who know him. Throughout his life he's kept himself apart from other hara. Now a new job brings him to Ferelithia, known as the Pearl of Almagabra, second only in prominence and reputation to the fabled city of Immanion. But Ferelithia conceals a dark past.

Meladriel, a loner shaman, who lives next to sea, knows only too well what lies hidden in Ferelithia's history. He was there when the town was taken by Wraeththu, through malign magic, from a human community. Since then, Ferelithia has bloomed as a party town, where visiting hara dance and feast and enjoy the excesses encouraged by the local deity, Kelosanya, a personification of erotic desire. Yet something dark stirs beneath the soil, perhaps awoken by something - or somehar - unexpected arriving in the town. Paranormal events alert Meladriel to the potential that the past is not only returning but seeking revenge.

Nearly all the original harish inhabits of the town have gone, melting away into distant lands, perhaps to escape the terrible events in which they took part. Meladriel has only one option. To make contact with a har he's avoided for many decades, the Municiphar Kazharn har Shadolis, once known as Karn, a musician in a band with Caeru, who has since risen to be one of the rulers of Wraeththu. Powerful and arrogant, Kazharn won't want to hear what Meladriel has to say. Yet who else can the shaman turn to?

In the strange old house, Inglefey, Seladris tries to deal with hauntings of his own and his new environment, until fate leads him to the cottage on the shore where Meladriel works his magic. Has Seladris been drawn to Ferelithia to help Meladriel repel a malevolent present or is he simply part of the evil that now threatens the town?