Exclusive cover reveal and excerpt: 'Unforgiven' by Lauren Kate

HEA is thrilled to share the cover and an excerpt from Unforgiven by Lauren Kate. Unforgiven, book six in the Fallen universe, features Cam's story and is told in alternating POVs between Cam and Lilith. It picks up where the previous Fallen book, Rapture, left off. Look for Unforgiven in November. (Bonus: We've included a look at the updated cover of Rapture. It and its previous Fallen novels are being reissued in September.) To see a larger version of the Unforgiven cover, click on the blue arrow in the lower right corner of the image.

Here's the blurb about Unforgiven (courtesy of Delacorte Press):

High school can be hell.

Cam knows what it's like to be haunted. He's spent more time in Hell than any angel ever should. And his freshest Hell is high school, where Lilith, the girl he can't stop loving, is serving out a punishment for his crimes.

Cam made a bet with Lucifer: he has fifteen days to convince the only girl who really matters to him to love him again. If he succeeds, Lilith will be allowed back into the world, and they can live their lives together. But if he fails ... there's a special place in Hell just for him.

Tick-tock.

Spread your wings and cry as bad-boy dark angel Cam finally reveals his anguished heart.

EXCERPT (Prologue)

Cam closed his eyes and saw her. The back of her red hair woven loosely in a braid. Her long fingers caressing the strings of a lyre as she leaned against a tree.

He never let himself think of her. Why was he doing it now?

"This can's busted," a familiar voice interrupted his reverie. "Toss me another?"

Cam peered down through a shattered roseate window, into the converted chapel Sophia Bliss had used as her office when she posed as the librarian at Sword and Cross.

A girl with glossy black hair appeared in the chapel below. Arriane's wings flexed as she shook a can of spray paint and lifted off the ground, aiming the nozzle at the wall.

Her mural featured a girl in a glowing blue forest. She wore a magnificently tiered black dress and looked up at a golden-haired boy who held out a white peony.

"Luce and Daniel 4ever," Arriane sprayed in gothic silver letters over the bell of the girl's skirt.

Behind Arriane, a dark-skinned demon with dreadlocks was lighting a tall glass candle showing Santa Meurte, the saint of Death, at the site where Sophia Bliss had murdered a mortal girl, Luce's close friend, Penn.

Fallen angels could not enter sanctuaries of God. The moment they crossed the threshold, the house of worship would go up in flames, incinerating every mortal inside. But this chapel had been de-sanctified when Sophia took up residence there. She was a trans-eternal; her presence nullified sanctification.

Cam spread his wings and descended through the broken window, landing silently behind Arriane.

"Cam." Roland embraced his friend. "Quite a coincidence, finding you here."

"Is it?" Cam asked.

"Not if you like carnitas," Arriane said and tossed Cam a small foil-wrapped package. "Remember the taco truck on Lovington? I've been craving these ever since we fled this hellhole." She opened her own foil package and devoured her taco in two bites.

"What are you doing here?" Roland asked Cam.

"I left my Les Paul in the dorm." Cam leaned against the cold marble pillar, hoping his friends wouldn't press him.

Roland nodded. "We've all got to find new ways to fill eternity, now that Luce and Daniel are gone." He paused. "Did what happened in Troy give you, I don't know..."

"I think the word you're looking for is hope." Arriane grabbed Cam's uneaten taco and downed it. "If, after all these thousands of years, Luce and Daniel can stand up to the Throne and seize a happy ending, why can't anyone? Why can't we?"

"Happy ending," Cam repeated, gazing through the shattered window. "It's a contradiction in terms."

"Listen to us." Arriane touched the scar on her neck. "What do we three jaded birds of prey know about love?" She looked from Cam to Roland. "Right?"

"Love's not the exclusive property of Luce and Daniel," Roland said. "We've all tasted it. Maybe we will again."

"Not me." Cam said.

Arriane sighed and beat her wings to rise a few feet. With deft slashes of her can of white spray paint, she added the subtlest hint of wings above Lucinda's shoulders. "Sometimes I wonder…"

"What?" Roland asked.

"If you guys could go back and not screw up so epically in the love department, would you?"

"What's the point of wondering?" Cam asked. "Rosaline is dead." He saw Roland wince at the mention of his lost beloved. "Tess will never forgive you," Cam added, looking at Arriane. "And Lilith—"

There. He'd said her name.

Lilith was the only girl Cam had ever loved. He'd asked her to marry him.

It hadn't worked out.

Lilith was dead, too. She'd killed herself off the coast of Lesbos three thousand years ago.

Mortals who committed suicide went straight to Lucifer, not because he always wanted them, but because the Throne was very big on positive mental attitudes. A few times, Cam had come close to asking Lucifer for a glimpse of Lilith's soul. He knew Molly had once bargained something with the devil to glimpse a friend's fate in hell. That didn't worry Cam—deals with Lucifer were a dime a dozen. What concerned him was what a glimpse of Lilith might do to him.

Roland seemed to be reading his mind. "You could do it your own way."

"I do everything my own way," Cam said.

"It's one of your best features," Roland said, looking at Cam, then at the stars through the ruined ceiling, then back again. "Cam." Roland's gaze roved over Cam's wings. Alarm glowed in his eyes. "Your wings."

Near the tip of Cam's left wing was a single, tiny white filament.

Arriane gaped. "What does it mean?"

It was one white fleck amidst a field of gold, but it forced Cam to recall the moment his wings had changed from white to gold, when he flew away from Lilith's love.

Cam had long ago accepted his destiny, but now, for the first time in millennia, he imagined something else.

What if…

Was it possible…

"I have to go." He extended his wings. Brilliant golden light flooded the chapel. Roland and Arriane leapt out of the way. The candle tipped and shattered, its flame dwindling on the cold stone floor.

Cam shot into the sky, piercing the night, and headed toward the darkest force of all.

Find out more about Lauren and her books at laurenkatebooks.net.