Brand of Malice: The Cleric's Curse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780645688405)

Do not weep, for it will find you in your grief.
Do not fight, for it will find you in your hope.
Do not love, for it will find you in your heart.
And when it finds you, surrender.

For all is already lost.

In the quiet farming village of Lakhdorian, William is a stable boy with nothing but hard work, a budding romance, and a future too small to matter, until the war between worlds re-opens on his very doorstep.

When a returning cleric brings something malevolent back from the gateway, William's life is torn open by an unseen horror. In the chaos that follows, he finds himself bound to an entity that feeds on his suffering, growing stronger with every loss he endures.

As his survival turns into a war for control of his own body, he is forced to turn to the knight's college, where the forbidden knowledge within its walls may hold the only answer to what is slowly becoming of him.

But the deeper he searches for salvation, the more the insidious presence bound to him learns how to use him.

Surrounded by powerful knights who would slaughter him if they knew of his dark secret, William begins to question the only truth that matters:

Where does he end... and the monster begin?