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

“What did youmean?” he asked, before she could get going again. “Is Rob one of them?”


“I only meant...can he do it? That’s all.” She sounded unsure, which was the first time in all the years he’d known her that he’d heard her sound less than a hundred percent certain about anything, ever. “Like Arthur could.”


Clearly, they had all been hoarding information.


Rob cleared his throat. “Like Arthur could?” he repeated.


“Yes. I’m not a fool, Robert Curland, despite being in skirts. I knew there was something odd about what was wrong with him when he wouldn’t let me examine him. He wasn’t like the old country boys, who don’t like a woman seeing their naked chest outside the bedroom.”


Rob blushed and Matty snorted painfully through his nose despite his exhausted misery.


Chapter 38