Lyndall Clipstone writes about monsters — and the girls who kiss them.
Ever since the Australia-based author watched Beauty and the Beast and felt disappointed when the beast transformed back into a prince, she’s gravitated toward spinning romantic tales of her own with monstrous characters front and center. Clipstone, who is known for her gothic titles Lakesedge and Forestfall, is gearing up to release her third young adult novel, Unholy Terrors. Within the pages, readers can expect another atmospheric, swoon-worthy romance to add to their TBR pile — one that’s perfect for spooky season.
Unholy Terrors follows Everline Blackthorn, a girl who has devoted her life to a group of warriors who stand guard against vicious monsters known as vespertines. But when she finds herself teaming up with a secretive vespertine named Ravel in order to uncover the truth about her mother’s past, she just might end up falling for the monster she’s sworn to kill.
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Clipstone describes Unholy Terrors as her “gothic fever dream with intense Sofia Coppola vibes,” adding that the book is a love letter to her former teenage self, along with anyone else who might have struggled with feeling lonely while growing up. “Amid the darkness and the horror, I sought to capture the fragile magic of being a teenager, the intimacy of friendship, the complexity of families, and the overwhelmingness of new love,” she explains.
Like many readers of the genre, Clipstone finds comfort in monster romance, pointing out how books can be a comfortable vehicle for internal exploration. “I think there’s something beautiful in seeing how fictional monsters can be caring and tender, and how their outer ‘otherness’ can guard a vulnerable heart,” she says, adding that there’s something empowering about facing monstrosity in a controlled way, within the confines of pages. “The real world is filled with so many frightening, uncertain things, some of which are beyond our control. But within the borders of fiction, we can interact with these fears — and with monsters — on our own terms.”
Even the world of books right now is an uncertain place. The U.S. has seen a staggering increase of book bans this year, with the American Library Association (ALA) reporting that nearly 2,000 titles have been challenged between January 1 and August 31, 2023. Many of these challenges have been directed at novels featuring LGBTQ+ characters and narratives, which is especially upsetting when books have historically been a safe space for queer and trans teens to understand and explore their own identities.
In addition to its lush, gothic vibes, Unholy Terrors features an LGBTQ+ cast, and features themes of friendship and found family — themes that are crucial for young people to access, says Clipstone. “As a teen, I didn’t have the language for my identity, and it wasn’t until much later in life that I understood my own queerness,” she explains. As such, Unholy Terrors features a range of connections — from sapphic pining to queer-platonic love—because being queer is about so much more than who you’re dating or kissing. It’s about a sense of self; it’s about the family you choose. “It is empowering for a character to build their own community, surrounding themselves with those who they’re most deeply connected to, whether that is by blood relation, romantic love, or enduring friendship,” says Clipstone.
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Ultimately, Clipstone hopes that young people will feel held by her books, and that her stories will give readers a sense of belonging, particularly if that’s something they struggle with in the real world. “My favorite books [as a teen] were the ones which made me feel seen, gave me hope for the future, and inspiration for my own creative journey,” she says. “It’s my dearest hope that young people will connect to my books in a similar way. I hope my stories will find the readers who need them, and if even one young reader feels seen by my flawed, emotional characters and their messy, imperfect choices, then I will be endlessly happy.”
Unholy Terrors releases on October 17, 2023. You can preorder it here, and meet Everline in an exclusive excerpt below.
The enclave is desolate when we reach the wall, everything layered in a silence that spills past the iron bars of the entranceway. I move toward the closed gates with my sleeve pushed back, my hand outstretched. Lux and I take turns to feed the gate spell when we walk the wards together, her on the way out, me at the return. But before I can touch the lock, Briar steps forward, into my path.
I falter. My feet drag loose a scatter of earth; I come to an awkward stop. She regards me unyieldingly, her expression latched as tight as the magic- sealed gate. We stare at one another, my hand caught in the empty space between us. I draw back and curl my fingers against my mantle, clutching a worn- smooth rib- cage bone. I feel as though I reached too close to a fi re and singed my wayward knuckles on the flames.
When I try to walk past, Briar matches my steps, refusing to allow me through. Her pale gaze slices toward the vespertine, still in Lux’s arms. “You can’t bring that in here.”
Incredulously, I look between them. My fingers tighten around the bones of my mantle until my nails bite against my palm. Lux hesitates, the streaked blood flaking off her cheeks and her braids unraveling.
She carefully lowers the shrouded form to the ground and says to Briar, “We already decided not to burn her.”
Briar shakes her head; a golden wisp of hair comes free from its ribbon, sticking to her sweat-damp cheek. “ ‘No vespertine shall cross the wall, even in death.’ You know this.”
“So what do you suggest?” I snap. “Leave the body outside, unburned, let her blood scent draw every monster in the moorlands? Hells, Briar, let me past.”
With a frustrated huff, she plants her feet wide apart and stands, unmoving. “You swore to our father that you would obey the warden vows. You can’t ignore the rules when it suits you, Everline.”
“Oh, so now Fenn is our father? Whatever happened to he has a title?”
“You may be a warden in name only, but even you should realize—”
I catch my braid up into my fist and drag it away from my neck, showing her my warden mark—the moonlike crescent at the top of my spine. “I’m a warden,” I say, the words forced out between my clenched teeth. “Marked as any other.”
Each year, in the months before the gathering, a lunar marking appears on all those called to join the wardens: raised blackly on their neck. Briar’s is just beneath her left ear; Lux bears hers in the hollow of her throat. And every marked warden can use magic, can feed the wall, can fight against the vespertine.
Briar’s in name only is a sharp blow, since I’ve had my mark since birth, unlike the other wardens. I can give my blood to the gate spell. I was taught alongside the other recruits to wield blade and bone against the vespertine. But when Fenn performed the ritual to awaken my magic—cutting my hand, mixing my blood with honey for the fiola—it failed.
Every attempt to awaken my magic has failed.
Briar tugs my braid loose from my hand. My hair falls down to cover my bared nape. “I’ve seen your mark, Everline. And like I said, even you should realize bringing that creature inside the enclave would be a sin.”
I round on her, feeling dizzy—the way I always do when I’m about to do something I shouldn’t. Like my body is trying to warn me to stop. But all I can see is Briar, with her armor that I didn’t make and the pinned-on sigil that belongs to Fenn, and suddenly the fear and fatigue of this night coalesce, and it’s all her fault.
I step forward, my boots heavy on the bare earth of the walkway. “You think you’re better than me because Fenn favors you. But do you really believe after what you did at the wards tonight, you’d make a good commander?”
Briar huffs, defensive. “You got in my way. If you’d just listened—”
“If you’d just waited—”
A flare of lantern light casts from the enclave. There’s a slam of the chapel door flung open, then a crush of footsteps across the graveled path that surrounds the training yard.
“What,” comes a voice, “is the meaning of this?”
We fall silent, like we’re bespelled, as Commander Fenn storms toward us from the chapel. He’s still dressed in travel clothes from his visit to the Hallowed Lands, thick gloves and a heavy cloak knotted around his broad shoulders. His hair is the same golden shade as Briar’s. He wears it tied back, but a few errant strands have escaped, framing the patch that covers his left eye.
Scowling deeply, he hangs his lantern on an iron hook beside the entrance, then drags off one glove and shoves his hand against the gate, pressing his fingers to the lock. We shift hurriedly into a line as his gaze marks over us, cataloging each piece of disarray. My wounded throat. Briar’s tense, stark anger. Lux, with the shrouded vespertine at her feet.
Finally, Briar steps forward. “Father. I’m just reminding Warden Blackthorn of our commandments. She wants to bring a vespertine into the enclave.”
My face goes hot; pricking with embarrassment and irritation. I glare at Briar. “Don’t pretend you care about rules when you wouldn’t even follow a simple instruction out there.”
“I don’t need your instructions, Everline. I outrank you.”
Roughly, I gesture to my throat, still bloodied. “And now I have this token to remember your excellent leadership.”
Fenn holds up his ungloved hand, cutting off Briar before she can speak. “Enough!” His fingertips are smeared with blood from the gate spell. He takes out a folded cloth from the depths of his cloak and wipes them clean as he turns toward me. “I’m ashamed of you, Everline. You’re a warden, not a child. Whatever disagreement you have with your sister, it should not get in the way of your holy tasks. I thought we’d moved past this disobedience.”
The disappointment in his tone clouds the air like a billowed haze of incense smoke; when I draw a breath, it pours into the depths of my lungs, harsh and acrid, choking me.
I stare up at him as heated shame burns across my cheeks. And even in this wholly wretched moment, I can’t help searching his face for the similarities between us. The way his mouth slants like mine when he’s displeased. The sharp angle of his chin. The hue of our eyes—a blue so dark, it’s almost black.
I pull at my fiola, sliding the empty glass back and forth along its silver chain. “This is a holy task.”
His expression turns steely, warning. “There is nothing holy in dragging an unburned vespertine to the wall, especially now when the magic of the bones is so fragile. Or perhaps you wish for a repeat of the past?”
He means my mother. The way that she abandoned the wardens when the wall failed, severing her vows like a silken thread cut with the sharpest tailor’s shears. This is the only way he’ll speak of her: a cautionary tale, a lesson to be learned.
Each time Fenn mentions my mother, it’s like a key has been turned, a door cracked open to reveal the barest sliver of the room locked away on the other side. Eagerness spirals wretchedly through me, the hunger of a wolf for a wounded hare. My pulse turns quick, and my throat goes dry, all of me pulled wire-taut with desperation to know more.
Why did she break her vows and abandon the wall that keeps us safe, the place we’re all sworn to protect?
But each time I’ve tried to press him for answers, that door slams closed, and I’m left as I always am—shut out in the dark, full of longing for impossible things.
I bite my questions back, feel them knotted in my stomach. I can’t even argue with him, tell him that Briar was the one who forced her way into our patrol, that she rushed forward when the vespertine appeared. I’ll only confirm Fenn’s accusation that I’m childish; unable to put my vows above my feelings.
I let out a breath and square my shoulders. “I apologize, Commander.”
This is all I can offer him, the proof I can be a true warden, a dutiful daughter; that I’m more than a wayward girl set to repeat the mistakes of a mother I never even knew. I long for my apology to change things between us. But he only nods curtly, folding up my words and tucking them away like a letter he’s finished reading.
He puts his glove back on, fastening it tightly at his wrist before he turns to Lux. “Now, would you care to explain why you’ve brought a vespertine to the gates instead of burning it?”
Lux wavers a little beneath his stare. She drops to one knee, supplicant, as she folds back a corner of the shroud. “Because of this.”
In death, the vespertine looks even more like a girl. Her eyelashes are fanned against her painted cheeks as though in slumber. Her mouth is curved into a rictus that seems almost pouting, fangs dimpling her lower lip.
Everything goes still, the moment laid out like pieces of a pattern spread on a tailor’s board. The vespertine with her girlish death mask. Lux, her head still bowed. Briar, with her hand pressed to the pinned insignia.
And Fenn—his gaze turned hard, marked by the same stern grief as when we go down to the catacombs to tend the dead. It disorients me, the way he’s so sad rather than shocked. He takes a breath, as though to steady himself. Then, to Briar, he says, “Take it back to the moorland and burn it.”
“Please, Fenn,” I persist. “Why does this vespertine look so—”
I cut off, unable to voice it. Human.
He turns to me; then, carefully, he touches my throat, his gloved fingers casting over the blood. “You’re hurt.”
I’m overtaken by the treacherous urge to throw my arms around him and press my face into his chest. I clench my fists until I feel the indent of my nails on my palms, force myself to remain still.
“I-it isn’t deep.”
He watches me for a beat; then his gaze softens, the barest flicker. And it’s almost like a reward when his voice gentles, when he pats my shoulder and says, “Go with Warden Harwood and see to your cut.”
His kindness carves all the fight from me. I’m suddenly aware of the ache in my throat and the fading adrenaline that’s left my whole body ragged and sore. I can’t trust myself to speak. I give him a terse nod, then step through the gate.
Lux follows me, and the gate closes behind us. I glance back to see Briar holding the lantern and Fenn with the vespertine in his arms. They walk out to the apiary field, the circle of light around them growing smaller and smaller as they move farther from the wall. Tears sting my eyes. I blink them away.
“Come on,” Lux says, sliding her arm around my waist, “let’s patch you up.”
As we walk through the enclave to the infirmary, watered light filters from beneath the closed chapel doors. Shadows of movement against the glassed windows show the wardens at work inside, lighting incense and tending to the ossuary shrine beneath the image of Saint Lenore.
I feel restless, desperate. Wardens don’t frighten easily. We live beside a wall built from bones, watch it weep bloodied tears. We go into the dark to face monsters. I face monsters with nothing but my armor and my two curved blades.
Fear is for girls who live in the Hallowed Lands, with their tender worries and fingers unmarked by steel or spells. But now, unease fills the air, ominous as a prophecy. All the events of the night—the changed vespertine, the unsurprised sorrow in Fenn’s eyes as he looked down at her—are like a handful of broken shards that I’m desperate to gather up and fit together. Yet as I clutch them, I only draw blood as the razored edges scrape my palms.
I think of him out on the moorland with Briar, gone to burn the monster we killed. If I were his trueborn daughter, if my mother had not betrayed her vows, would he have told me what it was that made him look so unshocked, so mournful, at the sight of the vespertine girl?
The infirmary is tucked behind the entrance to the catacombs, down a shallow flight of stairs. Clementine trees blot leafy outlines across the doorway, and inside, the mingled scent of decaying citrus and bone dust filters through the louvered window. I light the lantern. It flares reluctantly with a dying insect noise, all flicker and buzz.
A battered rosewood dresser is shoved against one wall, an enamelware sink against the other. The sink is patterned with a worn-out design that might be flowers, and there’s a rusted stain beneath the dripping tap, streaked down the inside of the basin like old blood.
Lux turns on the tap. Steam clouds up from the heated water, hazing the room before it drifts toward the open window. Sighing, I lean back against the dresser and unhook the lariat chains from my collar, setting them aside onto the countertop.
Blood has soaked the front of my dress in ribbonlike streaks. I think of the vespertine and the spreading stain from her cut throat. Picture her laid out on the moorland, Briar standing over her with a lit torch.
“None of this feels right,” I tell Lux, knowing how I sound, like some fable witch delivering an omen. “Did you see the way Fenn looked when you drew back the shroud? It was as though . . .he’s seen a changed vespertine before.”
Frowning, she rubs at her cheek, wiping away the crimson stripe. “Whatever it is—whatever is wrong—it will be better once the gathering has passed. When the wall isn’t bleeding and the magic is restored.”
I press my lips together, wanting to believe her. But I can’t let go of the wrongness that has permeated the evening, the way Fenn avoided my questions, and the longing that drags insistently against me, like there are ribbons tied on each of my limbs. “What if this is about my mother and the way she disappeared?”
Lux picks at a scrap of her chipping nail varnish, then shuts off the water and leans back against the sink. She regards me for a moment, her mouth softening, her brows knit together in tender concern.
“Evie,” she says, a gentle lilt to her voice. “What your mother did—you’re not bound to that path. She broke her vows, but you are here.”
As wardens, we swear three oaths: to come to the enclave when marked and called, to keep our watch and take no prisoners, and—as Briar so irritatingly pointed out—to never willfully allow a vespertine to cross the wall.
My mother broke all these vows before her death.
All I’ve ever wanted was to free myself of her treacherous legacy. But though it should feel right, feel holy, to burn the dead vespertine out on the moor, when I think of Fenn standing over her with a torch in his hand, a sick, panicked shudder runs through my whole body.
Burning that creature—that girl—feels worse than breaking the rules to bring her inside the enclave. Once she’s gone, the proof of what we saw will vanish, and I’ll be left doubting myself, wondering if that look on his face was nothing more than a fevered dream.
From outside, the scents of ash and smoke drift through the window. They’re faint enough I could pretend I’m imagining them, but I’m not. I shut the louvers, but that only serves to make it worse—the stink of sacrifice now trapped inside the room with us.
Lux takes my hands between her own. I stare down at her scarred knuckles, the healed-over marks, countless nicks from bone shards and gate tithes. She drags her thumb against my palm, and the rasp of her calloused skin against my own settles me, draws some of the tension from my shoulders.
I lean back against the dresser as she reaches for a cloth, wets it in the sink. As she tends to me, I catch a glimpse of my face in the oval mirror that’s fixed to the wall. My rounded cheeks, my dark freckles. My unruly hair and the new, blunt line of the bangs I just cut. I wanted to look more severe, but at this moment, with my worried eyes and bitten lips, I look like a child who played with scissors.
Lux presses the cloth to my throat, cleans away the blood. I scrunch my nose at the sharp ache from the wound. “How does it look?”
She tilts her head, considering. “It’s not so bad,” she says, the corner of her mouth lifted into a half-smile. “You’ll have an impressive scar when it heals.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted. Truly, Briar did me a favor.”
Laughing, she touches beneath my chin, tilts back my head to smear stinging antiseptic over the cut. There’s a ritual in this, too. Coming to the infirmary after our nights on the moors. Tending cut palms and bruised knuckles and split lips.
“There,” Lux says, stepping back. “You’re done.”
I take a strip of linen from the open field kit on the dresser and tie it around my throat. A macabre choker necklace.
I press my fingers to my neck, feeling the throb of the claw marks. My mother’s death has always trailed me like an unwelcome shadow, her demise on the moorland an ever-present reminder of how easily I could break. And now, I’m annoyed at my carelessness. How I let Briar rile me enough to slip like this and put myself—and Lux—at risk.
Lux unstoppers the sink and lets the water drain free. Her own throat looks suddenly too bare, soft and vulnerable.
I pull a measuring tape from my pocket, hold it up against her. She arches a brow, then lets out a congenial laugh, standing dutifully still as I stretch the tape across her neck, mentally piecing out a collar. Silver strung ribbon, woven with bone chips sharp enough to turn back claws.
A sound comes from outside. Boots on the stairs, then a brusque knock at the door. Before either of us can respond, Briar steps into the room. She goes to the sink, runs a washcloth under the tap, and starts to wipe the paint from her lips.
“You’re wanted on the wall,” she tells me. “Father has called you to the watch.”
She wrings out the cloth, the spatter of paint-grayed water in the sink like a punctuation mark. It’s not a punishment to be called to the watch, but the way Briar announces Fenn’s order makes it seem so. Lux casts a sympathetic look at me as she gathers up the stained linen and scraps of gauze. “I’ll leave the lamp on for you in our room,” she says.
I fold up my measuring tape, slipping it into my pocket as I climb the stairs to the enclave. My boots crunch over the ground as I cross the graveled path to where a steep wooden staircase leads to the watchtower. I tug the ribbon from my braid, let the night wind pull at my loosened hair. “Hells, what a mess.”
Up close, the wall is dewed with blood, trails seeping out from every space between the latticed bones. I can feel how the magic that strings the bones together is dwindling, like the sputter of a lampflame almost out of oil.
The wind is stronger at the top of the wall, cold against my cheeks. Fenn stands near the tower railing, his gaze fixed to the distance. I go to stand beside him. Laid out beneath us, the moorland is a woven cloth, all dark threads: the apiary with its pale hives like a row of stitches, the tangled gorse and faded heather deepening to shadows past the end of the world.
The only scrap of light comes from just beyond the hives, where the pyred remains of the vespertine smolder with a sickly orange glow.
Fenn sighs. For the briefest moment, a strange flash of regret casts over his face as he stares down at the flames. But when he realizes I’m watching him, he steps back from the edge of the tower and schools his expression into a neutral frown.
He takes off his gloves and slips them into his pocket. His nails are varnished with the same black paint that Lux uses. There’s a strip of leather cord tied around one wrist, which he’s worn as long as I can remember. He’s never said, but I’m certain it belonged to my mother.
He tugs at the cord, once, then shakes his head. “When you came back from your hunt, what would you have done with the body if I hadn’t been here to stop you?”
“I—” I hesitate, unable to lie—because he caught me—but not wanting to tell the truth.
“It’s against your vows to bring a vespertine past the wall, Everline.”
Longing winds through my body; a thread that’s tied around my heart, tangled in the curve of my ribs. I think again of Fenn’s reaction when he saw the dead vespertine beneath her shroud. He wasn’t surprised . . . he was sad.
“Fenn.” My voice sounds too small, too soft, up here above the bones. I swallow, trying again. “Have you ever known a vespertine to be changed like that before?”
He remains determinedly silent. Up here on the watchtower is all stars and silence, a pallid drift of pyre smoke, the night-dimmed enclave far below us like a separate world. I curl my hands to fists, imagining the closed door, the scrape of a key from the other side of the lock.
I want nothing more than that lock undone, that sliver of light to spill into the darkness where I stand. “In all the fables, there’s never been a vespertine like this. Like a girl. A human.”
Finally, I’ve spoken it aloud, and I wonder if this is how it feels to cast a spell, to murmur holy words and watch a flare of consecration ignite from bone and blood. Fenn looks at me in a way that I can’t read. His voice is low, serious, when he says, “Imagine yourself a commander. The fate of the wardens and the wall and the Hallowed Lands resting solely on you. The vows we swear are what keep us—and everyone—safe.”
My hand drifts to my nape, fingers pressed to my mark. I try to push aside the unintended hurt of Fenn’s words. Who would have a commander without magic? Let alone the illegitimate daughter of a warden who deserted her duties. The ache I feel—for this belonging I will never have—is wretched; I’m even more pathetic than Briar with her pinned-on sigil.
I am so far from who Fenn wishes me to be. Never have I felt so keenly as though I’ve been made double, split into two girls. One a dutiful warden, who strives to keep her vows. The other a wayward child who carries the inheritance of her mother’s heresy. The dutiful girl would be silent, stand in the tower, and keep her watch.
But I have jagged shards in my hands, and I’m desperate to piece them together even at the risk of bloodshed. “Something is out on the moorland, and it changed the vespertine we fought tonight. Is that what you saw when you went there, when I was born? When my mother died?”
Fenn sighs into the dark, his breath thorned with anger. “Every choice your mother made, every vow she broke, only led to destruction. When the vespertine attacked the Hallowed Lands, she deserted the wall and left us to fight—and die—while she fled. And when I finally found her at the border to the Thousandfold, it was too late for me to save her.”
A cold shiver tracks down my spine. The Thousandfold. This, then, is the secret that’s lain between us, caged by every veiled warning, every laden silence. My mother died in a land many thought myth, where Nyx Severin first arose in our world. Filled with perilous magic, it’s a place where all wardens are forbidden to go.
It spills from my mouth in a scatter of breathless words. “If she died in the Thousandfold, that means . . . I was born there.”
Fenn gives me a warning look. “Everline.”
The Thousandfold is a place of horrors, where the cathedrals built in Nyx’s honor now lie in ruins, destroyed when Saint Lenore made her final stand. I can hardly imagine it—that my life began where so much blood was spilled, where a monster was once worshipped as a god. “Why was she there? Why did my mother go to the Thousandfold?”
For so long, I’ve hungered for answers, and now the truth is an acerbic tincture that I’ll swallow down, greedy and desperate.
Fenn crosses the space between us with funereal slowness. His expression is stricken, raw with grief. He puts his hands on my shoulders. Crouches slightly so our faces are even.
“Your mother broke her vows, and it cost her life—and almost yours, too.” His thumbs press against my clavicles, both gentle and stern. “You did well tonight. You kept the wards lit. You stopped the vespertine. You did well. Leave it at that.”
The care in his gaze turns my bones milk-soft. His concern for me feels so personal. The same way he’d be worried about Briar. Unwelcome tears brim my eyes, and I hate how much this moment—this rare tenderness—has made me feel like a child again.
I look up at Fenn, the familiar angles of his face. His eye, the patch, the scar across his cheek. The way his warden mark curves around the side of his neck, the point of the crescent ending just beneath his ear. He taught me everything I know. How to fight, how to tend wounds, how to cleanly kill the vespertine.
He gave this to me—my whole life at the enclave. The past owes me nothing, that world beyond the wall, the mother I don’t remember. I shouldn’t need it—need her—while I have Fenn and the wardens. Even if I have no magic. Even if he will never claim me as his true daughter.
But the night is full of ghosts. The blurred image I have of my mother, built from my own guesswork—a young woman with the same freckled skin and treacle-dark hair as me—is overlaid by a vision of the slaughtered vespertine, all corpsepaint and bloodstained lace.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Tell me why she was out there. Tell me what she did, what all of this means.”
Fenn draws a breath, and my heart goes still. But then he falls to silence. Turning instead to stare at the expanse of sky that stretches over the moorland.
The clouds pare back, unveiling a pomegranate-round moon.
And above us, the sky burns red.
