It's 1918, and Matty returns home to the family farm from the trenches only to find his brother Arthur dying of an unknown illness. The local doctor thinks cancer, but Matty becomes convinced it's connected to the mysterious books his brother left strewn around the house. Rob knows something other than just Arthur's death is bothering Matty. He's know him for years and been in love with him just as long. And when he finds something that looks like a gate, a glowing, terrifying doorway to the unknown, it all starts to fall in to place. Matty's looking sicker and sicker in the same way Arthur did. What is Rob prepared to sacrifice to cure him? The answer is in the esoteric books ... and with the mysterious Lin of the Frem, who lives beyond the gate to nowhere. It's taken Matty and Rob more than a decade to admit they have feelings for each other and they are determined that neither social expectations or magical illness will part them now.

Inheritance of Shadows

“Go and sleep,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”  SEVEN: Cutting the Line


As the year turneddown toward Christmas, Rob practised and practiced with his kias. He was determined. It was obvious to anyone who knew him that Matty wasn’t well. He looked peaked and he was exhausted at the end of a day’s work. If the screaming thing they had heard twice now was the cause of the illness, had its claws into him as both Arthur and the mysterious writer of the book had described, then Rob was going to catch it and he was going to make it stop. Whatever that took.


He kept what he was doing hidden from Matty as much as he could. He didn’t want to worry him. It wasn’t exactly that he kept it a secret, more that he chose times when Matty wasn’t around. If Matty asked what he’d been up to, Rob told him. If Matty came upon him working, he didn’t stop. But he didn’t seek Matty out to tell him what he was doing.


Chapter 29