It’s a big year for romantasy fans. We’re getting teased with Fourth Wing adaptation news on what feels like a weekly basis, there’s a new Rebecca Yarros book on the horizon, and Sarah J. Maas will undoubtedly alter our brain chemistry when the sixth installment of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series arrives in October. Yes, romantasy readers are being fed this year, but they’re also frequently victims of one of the cruellest reading experiences: the cliffhanger. With the wait between books sometimes years long (look to the aformentioned authors, for example), being a romantasy reader means being part of a torturous, seemingly endless cycle. Fans of Brooke Fast’s To Cage a Wild Bird got a taste of this experience earlier this year. To say the book ended on a massive cliffhanger would somehow be an understatement.
Unfortunately, we have to wait until February 2027 to get its sequel, To Unleash a Darker Fate, in our hands. But The Everygirl is making the wait a little easier, thanks to Brooke Fast’s guilty conscience about leaving us with that ending. She’s giving us an exclusive sneak peek at where Raven’s story is headed next. “After [the cliffhanger], I think they’ll be especially excited to pick up with Raven and the crew exactly where they left off without getting into any spoilers,” she said.
And that’s not all. You’ll also finally get to see the highly anticipated sequel’s gorgeous cover. “I’m always blown away by an artist’s ability to capture a story so completely in a single image; it’s truly amazing,” Brooke said of the cover. “I had no idea what to expect or what I wanted the cover to look like, but as soon as I saw it, it was just this moment of realizing how perfectly it fit the book.” Read on to see the cover of To Unleash a Darker Fate and read an exclusive excerpt.
What is To Unleash a Darker Fate about?
After doing the impossible and escaping Endlock Prison, Raven and her fellow survivors embark on a treacherous journey across the Wastes, aching with the absence of those they have left behind. To get the people she loves to the safety of the North Settlement, Raven must contend with dwindling resources and poisonous snakes.
They are pursued across the desert by a hunting caravan sent from Dividium to kill them. As the hunters close in, Raven is shocked to find a familiar face among them, allowing them to make a desperate escape.
When all seems lost, the Collective offers Raven and her friends refuge in exchange for joining their fight against Dividium’s tyranny.
The highly secretive Collective constantly tests Raven’s loyalty, forcing her to question everything. Who does she owe her loyalty to, her friends or the Collective? The ex-prison guard or the fledging revolutionary?
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Exclusive cover reveal of To Unleash a Darker Fate
As for what aspect of the cover eagle-eyed fans should pay close attention to, Brooke said the badge with the axes crossed over the tree. “I can’t wait for everyone to learn more about the Collective (the rebel group introduced in book one) and the significance of the badge,” she said.
As you dive into the excerpt, I’ll leave you with one piece of advice: Keep Brooke’s own words about what readers will be thinking when they turn the final page in the back of your mind as you wait for the release: “What the f*ck just happened?”
Read an exclusive excerpt of To Unleash a Darker Fate
“Fine. You win. I’d rather be eating rat.”
I choked, nearly losing a precious sip of water, but forced myself to swallow before barking out a laugh at Yara’s antics. Next to me, Momo grinned.
“I don’t believe you,” I insisted, rubbing at my lower back. We’d covered at least ten miles across the Wastes that morning alone and had averaged nearly twenty a day for the last week since escaping from Endlock.
Coates’s surveillance drones, despite being worth more credits than the average Lower Sector citizen brought home in an entire year, were only capable of monitoring the edge of the Wastes, just past the perimeter of the forest surrounding Endlock, where Dividium’s power grid extended. We’d carefully dodged the drones for the first few miles of our journey but had soon traveled past their range.
My muscles ached, and my lips were cracked to the point of bleeding, never mind the toll the scorching sun had taken on every inch of my exposed flesh.
“I mean it,” Yara whined, scrunching her nose up at the ration bar she held in her hands. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to eat anything that doesn’t taste like cardboard. I’d take rat stew. Rat pie. Rat on a stick even. I feel terrible that I ever disparaged it.”
“Darling, can we look on the bright side?” Kit chided across from me, hiding her smile behind her hand. “We’re not being hunted by fanatics. We can enjoy our cardboard in peace.”
We sat in a circle, huddled around a map of the Wastes with Jed, Gray, and Opal, tracking the progress we’d made toward the North Settlement.
We’d passed through two supply stops so far—abandoned towns where the Collective stockpiled ration bars, water, and medical supplies to refill our packs. Enough to hold us over until we could reach the next cache.
Without the Collective’s resources, we couldn’t have survived the Wastes. There was no food or water to be found, only the ruins of abandoned villages and dry, cracked earth stretching toward the mountain range in the distance.
But what the Wastes lacked in resources, it made up for in freedom.
We’d done the impossible by escaping Endlock. We were alive. And if we had to eat tasteless, cardboard-textured ration bars every meal for a month as we made our way to safety? It was a small price to pay.
But there were moments when I couldn’t help but be less than euphoric. Moments when I relived Gus’s death. Stared into his lifeless eyes and watched the blood pool beneath his too-still body as I wondered what cruel twist of fate had allowed someone like me to survive Endlock, instead of him.
Gus had dedicated his life to saving people, while I’d spent mine sending them to their deaths.
If I managed to keep Gus from my mind, it wasn’t a reprieve that was granted to me, but an alternate nightmare.
I’d reach for Vale in the middle of the night only to realize he wasn’t next to me, my breath hitching as my hand scraped against the dusty tent floor instead of the warmth of his skin.
I couldn’t breathe when I realized I might never see him again, no matter what he’d promised to get me to leave him behind.
It would have been naive to think no one noticed the shifts in my mood.
Gray noticed. The fucker noticed everything.
Jed noticed, too.
“Raven,” Jed murmured, like my thoughts had summoned his concern. He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Eat something. You didn’t have breakfast.”
My neck prickled, and I looked up to find Gray worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as he watched our interaction, but as soon as I met his gaze, he jerked, looking away.
Instead of telling Jed that I wasn’t hungry, that I never seemed to be hungry anymore and the idea of eating made my stomach turn, I reached out and snatched the ration bar out of his hand. I took a large bite, forcing a smile. “Happy?” I said around a mouthful of half-chewed food, giving the bar back to him.
Yara blew out a breath before he could respond. “I concede that I’d rather eat cardboard than be back at Endlock.”
“If my mom truly loves me, she’ll throw in some tinned food at one of these supply stops,” Gray mused, his emerald eyes shining and the corners of his lips turning up in a lopsided smile.
A smile he hadn’t turned in my direction once since we’d set foot onto the Wastes.
“Please, for strike’s sake, I hope she loves you.” Yara groaned, moving to lie on her back. Before her head could hit the ground, Jed slid his pack beneath her, offering up a makeshift pillow. Yara grinned at him, settling into his pack. “Thanks, Jeddy.” She stretched her hand out to tousle his hair, and he fought back a smile.
“If we’re done complaining,” Opal snapped from across the circle, where she was squinting at the map, a hand raised to her forehead to shield her freckled face from the sun, “can we get back to planning our next move?”
Kit narrowed her eyes at Opal. Over the time I’d spent with Kit, I’d come to know her as a peacemaker—that was, until someone gave her a reason not to be. And from the look on Kit’s face, hearing Opal use a snarky tone with Yara was reason enough.
I rushed to speak before they got into an argument. Another argument.
“We already know our next move, don’t we?” I asked. “We keep walking. We set up camp when it gets dark. We get to the next supply stop in a day and a half and hope Aggie loves Gray enough that she includes tinned food, though I wouldn’t bet any credits on it.”
I grinned at Gray as I spoke the last words, attempting, for what felt like the millionth time, to bridge the canyon-sized gap that stretched between us. I’d thought, after the coded letters we’d exchanged while I’d been at Endlock and the moment we’d shared when he’d snuck into the prison to deliver the respirators and ironroot tincture we’d needed to make our escape, that there’d finally been a thread of understanding connecting us again.
This place has changed you.
He’d said it with awe-filled eyes, like for the first time since my parents’ deaths, he recognized me.
But after hugging me within an inch of my life when we’d met him and Opal at the rendezvous point the night of our escape from Endlock, there had been no hint from Gray that he had any intention of mending our relationship.
I held my smile for a moment longer, but Gray didn’t look in my direction, his eyes never leaving the map.
The corners of my lips tipped down.
Opal rolled her eyes, tossing her long, midnight-hued braid over one shoulder. “And what if we encounter raiders? We need to have a plan for everything.”
Opal was…not what I’d expected. I’d seen her on and off for years, and I knew she worked on missions for the Collective with Gray, but I’d never realized just how by the book she was. There would be no gravitating away from the plan where she was involved.
Which I supposed was a good thing, in a place like the Wastes, even if it grated on me.
“We haven’t come across a single raider,” Jed reminded her, crumpling up the wrapper from his ration bar and stuffing it into his pocket. “And what plan could we have for that, anyway? We’d fight back.”
Gray pointed out our guns—the two he and Opal had brought from the Collective and the reverse-engineered rifle we’d stolen from Endlock.
“We’ll be okay, Opes,” Gray insisted. “We have guns, and they shouldn’t.”
Hopefully. Gray didn’t speak the word, but I saw it in the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“And we all have these,” Momo chimed in, unsheathing his dagger and flipping it into the air. He caught it without looking and smirked. “I think you’ve all seen what I can do with a dagger.”
I smothered a smile, but my amusement vanished before it had fully taken root when I remembered the last time Momo had needed to use the weapon. He’d stabbed Warden Larch during our escape from Endlock. Played a massive part in making sure we got out of there alive.
Opal stared at Momo for a long moment before nodding and getting to her feet. “Fine. But we need to get moving. We’ve already stopped for too long, and we need to get in at least ten more miles before we camp for the night if we want to get to the next supply stop on schedule.”
The idea of standing, of walking, made me grimace. But our water was dwindling again, and we wouldn’t survive the Wastes for long without it.
I stood and grabbed Momo’s outstretched hand, hoisting the boy to his feet and squeezing him against me in a quick hug. “Have you drunk enough water today?” I asked him, my voice low.
He’d been different since Gus died. We all had, but no one had been as close with Gus as Momo was. Now he didn’t sleep well. Didn’t speak as much as he used to, and when he smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes.
He hesitated. “Yes, but . . .” He glanced around, but the others were busy packing their bags. He cleared his throat, and shame flashed in his eyes. “I’m really tired today. Do you think we could have an early night?”
My chest tightened. I wanted to say yes more than anything, but if we didn’t stick to our schedule, we wouldn’t get to the next supply stop in time. “I—”
“You’re tired?” Jed came out of nowhere, crouching down to Momo’s level. “That’s perfect, Big Man. I have too much energy. I’ll never be able to fall asleep tonight unless you do me a favor and let me give you a piggyback ride. What do you say?”
I bit my lip. Too much energy, my ass. Jed had spent half of the previous night on watch, and I’d seen him doze off during our lunch break. But he knew his limits better than I did.
Momo’s eyes lit up, and he nodded shyly, letting out a shriek of laughter when Jed picked him up and swung him onto his back. I smiled, even as my heart clenched. Momo hardly ever got to be a kid. It was so rare to see him let loose.
Gray stepped in front of me, kneeling to grab Jed’s abandoned pack and hoist it over his shoulders alongside his own, without so much as a glance in my direction.
I joined the others, and we wrapped scarves over our heads and faces until only our eyes were exposed to the harsh sun.
Lauren Blue, Editor & Book Club Co-Host
As an Editor for The Everygirl, Lauren ideates and writes content for every facet of our readers’ lives, from must-read books and behind-the-scenes interviews to beauty products she can’t live without. When she isn’t sitting in an AMC watching the latest buzzy release, she can be found scouring Goodreads for the perfect pick for The Everygirl Book Club. There, she co-hosts discussions with members, debating plotlines, fancasting characters, and, of course, tossing in her own recommendations.
Feature graphic images credited to: Anna Gordon | Dupe
