A Swan Dark
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Chapter One
Returning
Morgan gripped the handle of her father’s old sedan, torn between staying in the car for the rest of the summer—or stepping back into the only place that might finally tell her what happened the week she disappeared.
And why she couldn’t remember it.
Death by heatstroke still looked like the better option.
“Come on, Morgan. It’s beautiful here.” Her dad stretched his long limbs, looking a decade younger at the sight of the Nook. “See the way the light falls through the branches? The Japanese have a word for it—komorebi.” He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “Worth leaving before dawn, right?”
Morgan’s mouth twitched. Chickadees chirped above him, and a breeze rustled the leaves of an old oak tree. As if trying to coax her from the car, dappled sunlight warmed her face. She glared at him through the slit in her window. You know what happened last time we were here. Don’t pretend you don’t.
His girlfriend Leanne stepped beside him, and Morgan rolled her eyes.
Unlike her dad’s previous relationships, which crashed and burned in spectacular flames, Leanne stuck like molasses. This whole return tour had her fingerprints all over it—fresh air, bonding time—as though a family vacation could solve everything.
In matching flannel, Leanne squeezed her dad’s arm and sighed dramatically. ”Aw, the pines smell like Georgia summers.” Her smile flickered, hopeful and nervous all at once.
Morgan’s dad rocked back on his heels, road grit coating his rolled sleeves. He actually looked happy about it.
Who was this man?
Her dad lived in pressed button-downs and business meetings. Not flannel, not hiking boots, and not whatever this strange outdoorsman phase was.
He gestured toward Morgan’s older sister, Serena, who was dragging her massive suitcase across the gravel. “Hard to believe it’s been ten years since we’ve been back. What do you think, Hun?”
Serena dropped the bag with a thud. A year older and determined to act like it, she carried herself as though she had somewhere better to be. “It’s going to be a long summer.”
Her gaze caught on the trees. For a heartbeat, the color drained from her face.
Then she pulled her sunglasses over her eyes and wheeled her suitcase toward the Nook, their hundred-year-old cottage in northern Vermont.
Morgan slumped deeper in her seat, tugging her oversized T-shirt over her knees.
Her dad sighed and turned back to her. “Come on, Kiddo.” He hesitated, just a beat too long. “You can’t stay in the car forever.”
She didn’t respond. A strand of half-blue hair slipped across her face. She grimaced and shoved it behind her ear. Right. That. She’d dyed the bottom half of it the night her dad announced their grand return. Spite, she’d claimed at the time.
Now the color felt too bright. Too bizarre against her skin. But changing it back felt worse.
As he leaned over her window, his brow furrowed—then smoothed back to that practiced, patient expression he reserved for his problem employees. “Honey, remember—the past belongs in the past.”
The words sank into her like a splinter she’d never managed to dig out.
The lake. The full moon. For a second, she could almost see it. Water black as glass, something moving over the surface.
Her fingers slid on the door handle.
He knew. He had to know.
She took a breath and grabbed it again.
“Dad,” she said.
He looked at her, calm. Expectant.
They’d rarely talked about it. The thought of knowing—really knowing—made her want to run. A part of her didn’t want the answer. What if it made everything worse? What if she was the reason?
And if she was—what did that make her?
She asked anyway.
“That week,” she said. The words scraped out of her. “When I went missing.”
His patience vanished. Not anger—something flatter. His gaze turned distant. “Morgan,” he said quietly.
“You were there,” she pressed. “You know something. I—”
“You were found safe. That’s what matters,” he cut in. “You don’t remember because nothing happened. Just leave it be.”
He hadn’t answered her question, just like the countless other times she’d tried. Her fingers itched for the newspaper clipping in her pocket. To read it again. Find a clue. Any detail she might have missed.
But she’d already read it so many times the words were seared into her memory.
Missing for a week. Search parties scoured the woods. Slippers discovered in the mud.
“We need to keep moving forward,” her dad continued.
She groaned. Since her father had started counseling, he’d said that expression at least three times a week. “Dad, that’s not how it works. You don’t just decide it’s over and pretend nothing happened. We quit coming here for a reason.”
“Morgan, please. I know it’s hard, but it’s like what my counselor always says: we have to forgive—”
She’d rather face her childhood nightmare than listen to another therapy platitude. She shoved the door open so hard the hinge popped.
His face flushed red, but to his credit, he didn’t yell. He drew a slow breath through his nose and didn’t speak.
Maybe counseling wasn’t all bad.
***
The inside of the Nook smelled of dust and old wood. Heat pressed down like a heavy blanket. Whoever built the place had apparently decided insulation and air-conditioning were optional.
Every surface overflowed with stuff: crooked picture frames, aged fishing gear, a clock that ticked a fraction too slow. It should have felt cozy. Familiar.
Instead, it felt neglected. Left behind too long.
Leanne immediately took over, cleaning as though she owned the place. Their dad’s top half vanished into the hearth. And Serena claimed the biggest bedroom, somehow making the explosion of art supplies and designer clothes look like a magazine spread.
With a frown, Morgan kicked an old footstool, sending it skittering across the floor. She’d just turned seventeen. She’d planned to work at the coffee shop all summer, maybe meet someone attractive, maybe finally feel normal.
Instead, she was here.
“I think we’ll be able to have a fire tonight,” her dad called from inside the fireplace.
Morgan plopped down in an oversized chair, avoiding the dark windows beyond the living room. Sweat glued her legs to the leathery material. “It’s a million degrees. Why would we need a fire?”
Leanne paused her mopping in the kitchen, a messy braid spilling over her shoulder.” I love fires.”
“Of course you do,” Serena muttered, flipping a magazine page. Even in the heat, Serena was pristine—lounging on the checkered sofa like a fashion model for cottage life.
“New place, new energy.” Their dad’s head popped out of the hearth, streaked with soot. “Let’s set the tone right this time. Why don’t you guys head outside? Explore the woods. Get some fresh air. Check out the lake.”
Morgan’s entire body locked. A damp chill curled around her ankles, like the water had already found her.
She’d planned to go there. Just not yet.
“All you’ve done is complain since we got here.” Her dad wiped his face with a rag, smearing more soot. “Either start cleaning or go outside. I’m sure Leanne could use some help.”
“I sure do,” Leanne hollered. “There’s a second mop in here.”
“You love the lake, Morgan,” Serena said, her voice laced with a sneer. For a second, something flickered across her sister’s face—apprehension, maybe, or guilt. She smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her sleeve. “So many great memories.”
Sure. Like near-death trauma counts.
Leanne pranced into the living room, bucket in hand, a scarf knotted around her head, looking absurdly delighted to be cleaning a hundred-year-old cottage. She jiggled Serena’s shoe. ”Cleanin’s fun. You can tell me all about that graduation party you girls went to.”
The room went awkwardly quiet.
The party. The same day her dad announced their return, Morgan had made every terrible decision possible. She’d dyed her hair, snuck out, and gone to a notoriously wild graduation party. She’d barely taken a sip before the police busted the place for underage drinking. Both sisters ended the night calling their dad from jail.
He paused, his usually manicured hair sticking up in ashy tufts. “I’d also like to hear more about that little adventure.”
Serena rose from the couch, hesitating for a heartbeat. “Lake it is.”
Leanne placed a warm hand on Morgan’s shoulder. ”Just us, then, Sweetheart.”
Nope.
Morgan burst through the front door. Leanne was the last person she wanted to explain herself to.
Then she saw the trail cutting through the trees and stopped.
She’d avoided it long enough. That place owed her answers. For ten years she’d carried the feeling that she’d come back wrong—as though seven-year-old Morgan had returned without some vital piece of herself.
Yet curiosity wasn’t what drove her. A terrible certainty settled deep in her bones.
If she didn’t find the truth this time…
she never would.
She tore down the trail, passing her sister. Morgan rubbed her arms, trying to ignore the prickling sensation crawling along her skin.
The trees cocooned them, funneling the scents of summers past—evergreens, damp soil, lingering suntan lotion. Each tugged at memories she wasn’t sure she could handle.
“You know,” Morgan said, her lips curling, “you used to tell me some dumb story about how I was cursed and a dragon would kidnap me here.”
For years, Serena had horrified her with tales of what would happen when they returned. In milder versions, a dragon mauled her. Later ones featured townsfolk dismembering her and mounting her bloody head on a pike.
“Hmm,” Serena paused as a green dragonfly darted past. “It’d be nice to be an only child. You have a way of ruining things.”
She swept past Morgan, her perfume mocking her with the last laugh.
“Don’t you think it’s twisted to tell a kid she’s destined to be a child sacrifice?”
Serena stopped short, her shoulders rigid. She spun, her eyes flashing with something raw and unguarded. “You want to know what’s twisted?” Her voice dropped. “You’re not the only one who’s lost—”
Her throat worked, words hovering at the edge of her lips.
Then she swallowed them.
Morgan waited, but Serena only looked away. “Forget it.”
They stepped into a clearing, and there it was.
The lake.
A blinding expanse of blue stretched impossibly far beneath the midday sun.
Morgan froze, flip-flops anchoring her to the ground as Serena breezed toward the water. Her stomach knotted. Breath caught like she’d swallowed glass. The forest, so loud moments ago, fell quiet. The air hummed, ancient and alive. Waiting for her.
Heat flooded her veins—then iced over—then burned again. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
A swan.
A moon, full and round.
And then—the girl.
Moonlight clung to her skin as feathers drifted in her wake.
Morgan’s hand twitched toward Serena’s retreating shape. “No…”
Every instinct screamed at her to flee. Her muscles locked, ready to bolt.
But something deeper—quieter—coiled inside her, holding her in place.
She dug her nails into her palm. Forced air into her lungs.
She lifted her head and gritted her teeth. The lake. The full moon. Serena’s old stories. The newspaper clipping. Her slippers in the mud. None of it had ever fit. But maybe she’d been trying to solve the wrong puzzle.
She headed toward the lake.
Opening chapter excerpt — subject to change before publication.
Morgan's story is only beginning
A Swan Dark is a YA fantasy of sisters, buried truths, and magic that binds—and breaks.
From A Swan Dark, a YA mythic fantasy novel.
