This Savage Song

The first installment in the Monsters of Verity series is set in V-City, the capital of Verity. Twelve years before the story begins, an event called the Phenomenon occurred: Decades of accumulated violence reached a tipping point, causing monsters to manifest from brutality. Three types exist: Corsai, shadow creatures born from nonlethal violence; Malchai, vampiric beings born from murders; and Sunai, the rarest, born from mass tragedies, who appear human but feed on sinners' souls. Six years ago, a war between two rival powers ended in a truce splitting V-City along a barrier called the Seam. In North City, crime lord Callum Harker sells iron medallions to citizens in exchange for protection from monsters. In South City, Henry Flynn leads the Flynn Task Force (FTF), aided by three Sunai who hunt sinners to stem the cycle of violence.

The novel alternates between two protagonists. Kate Harker, Callum's only daughter, burns down a chapel at her sixth boarding school to force her father to bring her home. She has spent five years in exile since a car accident that killed her mother, Alice, and left Kate with partial hearing loss and facial scars. She has shaped herself into a cold figure modeled on her father's ruthlessness. August Flynn, the youngest of three Sunai, lives in the Flynn compound, a fortified skyscraper in South City. He longs to join the FTF, but his adoptive parents, Henry and Emily Flynn, refuse, fearing capture. When Henry learns Kate has enrolled at Colton Academy in North City, he sends August under the alias "Freddie Gallagher" to monitor her as potential leverage.

August struggles to pass as human at Colton. Monsters cannot lie, so he cannot claim to be human without his throat closing. His sister Ilsa, the oldest Sunai, sees him off with a warning. His brother Leo, who publicly leads the FTF, confiscates August's violin, his primary tool for using his abilities. Kate arrives at Colton determined to dominate, intimidating students and cornering anyone who questions her family.

Kate and August meet behind the school and fall into an easy exchange. Over the following days, they discover a shared sense of being outsiders, talking honestly about monsters and family despite the secrets between them.

Away from Colton, their lives grow more violent. August hunts a serial killer by playing his violin, which paralyzes the man and draws his soul to the surface. Kate volunteers to execute a rogue Malchai for her father at Harker Hall, his headquarters. The truce deteriorates when an ambush near the Seam, revealed as an inside job, kills FTF soldiers. Leo forces August to kill with a knife instead of music, and August questions whether violence should ever become easy.

Kate grows suspicious of Freddie. Photos she snaps confirm his eyes show up as black smudges, and she researches Sunai using her father's surveillance archive. She considers turning August in but deletes the photos, planning to capture him herself. She offers him a ride to school but cannot bring herself to act.

Two Malchai who have clawed off their Harker brands attack Colton, killing students and staging the deaths to look like Sunai executions. August, locked in the music room after the access pad is sabotaged, escapes and finds Kate pinned down with a blowtorch aimed at her face. He plays his violin to stagger the Malchai; Kate drives iron spikes into both creatures. August collapses after trying to absorb a Malchai's essence, since Sunai cannot feed on monsters. Kate takes him to an abandoned building rather than turning him in.

When August wakes bound to a metal frame, Kate confronts him. He confirms his identity and explains the attack was a setup to break the truce. Kate recognizes Sloan, her father's Malchai lieutenant, as the mastermind. When men arrive, Kate breaks the metal bars so August can slip free, and they flee into the subway tunnels. August's violin music repels the Corsai with threads of visible light, but the strings snap one by one, and they barely reach an iron-striped subway car. Inside, August patches Kate's wounds and explains that Sunai can only take souls stained by sin. Under Sunai influence, Kate begins recounting her mother's death but cannot access the full memory. August reveals that each day he resists feeding, a mark called a tally burns into his skin; going dark erases the tallies along with a piece of his humanity. He last went dark 422 days ago and killed nine people.

They flee to a motel, where Ilsa appears to warn that Malchai are approaching. After fighting off attackers, they steal a car and speed east. Kate calls her father, who insists Sloan is loyal and directs her to the family's old house at the edge of the Waste, the dangerous buffer zone surrounding V-City. August calls the FTF, but Leo answers and orders him to abandon Kate. Sensing something cold in Leo's voice, August hangs up. News reports declare Kate has been abducted by the Flynn family.

August's hunger reaches a critical stage. His body radiates dangerous heat and begins leaking black blood. He collapses, begging Kate not to let him go dark, and she leads him to her mother's house. There, the full memory of Alice's death surfaces: Through the broken windshield, Kate saw Sloan's grinning face after the crash. Sloan murdered her mother. When one of Sloan's agents arrives, Kate shoots him, and the fresh death pushes August to the brink.

Sloan arrives, overpowers Kate, and chains August in a warehouse with duct tape sealing his mouth. Sloan tortures August, claiming he attacked Ilsa and cut her throat. Kate frees herself and finds Sloan's Malchai ally Oslo dead in the corridor, killed by an unseen figure. Leo steps from the shadows, drives the metal bar through Sloan's back, and confesses he orchestrated everything: He told Sloan about August's placement, facilitated the attacks, and engineered the crisis to provoke a war to let the Sunai cleanse the city. Leo plays a flute, entrancing Kate, and orders August to kill her.

August goes dark, transforming into a towering figure of shadow and smoke with horns, wings shedding embers, and a heart pulsing with fire. Kate whispers she is not afraid. Instead of touching her, the creature closes its shadow fingers around Leo's throat. Leo's body turns to stone, then ash, then nothing. The darkness retreats, and August stands before Kate, wounds healed and all tallies erased. He asks if she is all right. She says she is alive, and he replies that it is a start.

They return to V-City so Kate can confront her father with a Sunai present to guarantee truth. Harker admits the conspiracy was his: The truce was failing and he needed a war. Kate confronts him with the memory of Sloan murdering Alice. Harker dismisses the death, saying Alice was no longer his because she tried to flee. Kate shoots him twice but cannot deliver the killing shot. August steps between them, warning that killing Harker would stain her soul. He takes the gun and tells her to leave. Behind soundproof doors, August reaps Callum Harker's soul.

Kate crosses the Verity border under an assumed name and hears radio reports of mysterious murders in the territory of Prosperity, suggesting the Phenomenon may be spreading. She turns toward Prosperity. August returns to the Flynn compound and learns Ilsa survived but lost her voice. He puts on FTF fatigues and takes up a new stainless-steel violin, resolving to be the monster if it keeps others human. In an epilogue, a new Malchai manifests from the man Kate shot. She pulls the metal bar from Sloan's back; it missed his heart. His eyes open. He asks her name. She answers: Alice.