DreamBound (The Colors of Malent, #1)

Alara Martin is fourteen, and there’s a sound under her house.
Slow, patient, a long way down, and she’s the only one who’s ever heard it. At nine she asked her mother whether a furnace could go like a heartbeat. Her mother said furnaces make all sorts of noises, sweetie, and then looked at her a few seconds too long.She’s adopted. She came home in a blanket with symbols stitched into the lining, and lately she wakes with those same symbols in her head, a splitting headache, and bruises she can’t explain. Tonight she’s lying on her bedroom floor with her ear against the boards. She has a math test in nine hours.She posts photos of the blanket. The internet answers back with static, theories, and one private message from an account with no name on it. He has seen these symbols before. He wants to meet her alone, in a parking lot, at seven, and he asks her to keep them between the two of them.He turns out to be a boy from her school who stutters when he is frightened.Then a man with money and an interest in her blanket invites her to his office and offers to tell her where it came from.Her mother wants the subject closed. Her best friend tells her she’s picking a fantasy over a real person who cares about her. And Alara, handed a prophecy by a stranger, says she only wants to pass ninth grade.The place under the floor is called Malent, and it’s been waiting fourteen years for her to answer.She’s going to cross. What meets her on the other side is something else entirely.The Colors of Malent: DreamBound · StormBound · RiftBound (upcoming)