We’re thrilled to share an exclusive excerpt from Hannah Whitten’s terrifying ‘Reliquary,’ releasing August 11 courtesy of Orbit.
EXCLUSIVE: We’re thrilled to share an exclusive excerpt from Hannah Whitten’sReliquary, releasing courtesy of Orbit this month. The terrifying horror debut from the New York Times bestselling author follows a grieving woman lured to her late fiancé’s family’s remote island estate—only to uncover eerie family secrets, a haunting past, and a monstrous hunger stirring beneath the sea. Early reactions have been rave, and as we get into the throes of spooky season, Reliquary needs to be at the top of your TBR list.
Read more about Hannah below and check out the terrifying excerpt for yourself. Reliquary releases August 11.
Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. Her books have been international bestsellers and translated into multiple languages. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, watching horror movies, or chasing after her feral children. She lives in Tennessee with her family, two dogs who think they run the house, and a cat who actually does.
Author Hannah Whitten
“Box breathing, in and out, pulling in the smell of citrus cleaner and expensive perfume, blowing out anxiety.
In theory.
The ride down to the submarine felt like it took years. At least the elevator itself was big enough for everyone to stand comfortably without feeling crowded, but that didn’t help much—all Claire could think of was that they were going down, down, disappearing beneath the murk of the ocean, far enough that the light above would be only a memory.
memory
The pull of her jeans on her waist, waterlogged and heavy, wet denim chafe. The cold seeping in the corners of her makeshift vessel, because the sea was a living, unseasonable thing and summer wouldn’t keep her from being caught in its teeth, her defenses slowly washing away. How the ocean muffled her screams, muffled the silence that came after, when the water was up to her neck and her limbs were numb and she realized it was useless, this was it.
The voice—
“You OK?”
Ash. Of course it was Ash who noticed she was spiraling, the last person she wanted to talk to. He stood next to her, leaning against the spotless metal wall, head tipped back and eyes closed. Had he been looking at her, seeing near panic on her face, or was it so palpable he could feel it, emanating from her like radio waves?
The elevator was small enough that everyone could hear the question, but none of the other Ashburys acted like they were listening. If her fear was a palpable thing, it hadn’t touched them like it had Ash. Or they were just too polite to draw attention to it.
She wanted to give him the silent treatment, but instead Claire nodded. “Fine.”
A snort. “Liar. But good try.”
Claire’s lips pressed to a grim line. The whiskey bottle was clutched tight in Ash’s hand, and the smell coming off him was enough to make her eyes water. But what he’d said at the dinner table still stuck in her head, unable to be easily dismissed.
He didn’t choose.
Elias had said strange things when he drank, sometimes. “You’re perfect,” he’d slurred once, in their backyard, next to the outdoor pizza oven they never used. “So perfect for me. For all of this.”
Later that night, she’d rolled over to an empty bed, his pillow cold. Elias had been in the living room, choking a wine bottle, staring at the octopus-thing in the tank.
She couldn’t ask Ash about what he’d meant here, not with everyone else in listening distance. Hell, she probably shouldn’t ask him about it at all; his words were just conjurings of alcohol and rudeness. But the shivery feeling in her stomach wouldn’t settle, even though she’d resolved over and over again to stay.
That resolve flickered in her chest, in that same place where the mace head of her grief lived. An echo of who she used to be, before she was excavated by her family’s death, by Elias’s death, by the crush of a life lived lonely. Maybe that person would have left already. Maybe if her life had taken a different course, she’d be someone who put stock in gut feelings, immature, buffeted by the whims of her animal instincts.
But Claire was an adult who knew that you couldn’t rely on your gut. You had to be objective.
The elevator shuddered. Lurched. Claire’s hand shot out of its own accord, bracing against the wall like she was preparing for impact, knees locking.
Dierdre slid her a curious glance, but didn’t comment. The door opened.
Wellington emerged first, holding out his hand for Audrey. She placed her own in his palm, stately, like they were entering a ballroom rather than an underground dock. Patrick followed, Dierdre on his arm, then Greg and Theo, similarly linked.
Ash pushed off the wall. Huffed a sigh that feathered the front of his hair. Then he stuck out his elbow in her direction.
“Seriously?” Claire’s brow climbed. “We have to be escorted onto the dock?”
“Tradition, C,” he replied. “Just like ol’ Great-cubed-Grandpa Wellington did it, escorting all the consorts to the new ships.”
Consorts. The feudal language made her teeth grind.
“Just one more layer of Ashbury fuckery,” Ash continued, elbow still extended. “I figured you’d be all about it.”
Claire strode past him, purposefully knocking into his arm. It threw Ash off-balance, made him lean against the wall before righting himself again, his equilibrium whiskey-weighted.
“Good,” she heard him murmur as she stepped off the lift.
But Claire wasn’t listening, because her heartbeat was too loud in her ears to let her concentrate on anything else.
An aquarium. That’s what this felt like—being trapped in an aquarium, held captive for something larger and much higher on the food chain to observe. Like the one in her living room, empty now.
The dock was a glass bubble under the water, surrounded on three sides by deep, crushing blue, the fourth made of the dark cliff rock that housed the elevator. Recessed lights in the floor were the only thing that kept the room from unnavigable dark; the sun had long since set, and they were nearly too deep for the light to reach anyway. Distantly, Claire wondered about that. Shouldn’t the pressure break the glass, burst their eardrums? But apparently these were problems that Ashbury Marinography had solved, smoothing the cracks in basic physics with money like new asphalt in a pothole.
The dim glow of the recessed lights illuminated the slide of fish over the glass, corpse-pale and thin enough for her to pick out bones, creatures not meant for human eyes to see. Much uglier than the ones she’d seen through the wall of windows above, their unsightly fellows relegated to the far depths.
Claire’s fingers found the smooth rock behind her. She pressed against it, this reminder of the surface. The strange calm she’d felt since arriving, since her impromptu birthday party, was fraying at the edges now, letting the sharper sides of her fear begin to slice through.
Wellington looked over his shoulder, frowning as Ash stepped out of the lift without Claire. He rearranged his face quickly, shooting Claire herself a smile once he found her by the wall. “Claire Sutherland,” he said, intoning like an announcer, “meet the Poseidon.”
Wellington pressed his hand against the glass dome keeping the sea at bay as the rest of the Ashburys moved to clear the center of the floor. Another blue outline formed around his fingers, like when he called up the lift.
And the floor began to move.
It wasn’t a rumble—it was too smooth for that. More like a roll, like the movement of the tides pressing against the glass had somehow transferred to the tile beneath her feet. Claire braced herself, one hand against the wall and another flailing outward. Her fingertips brushed Ash’s rolled-up sleeve, and she snatched them away.
He didn’t react. Just looked at her with those blue blue blue eyes and took another swig of whiskey as the floor folded in the middle of the room.
That was the best word for it. Folded, like a sheet. The ripples outward seemed to take more and more floor with them as the tile crumpled, withering gracefully to reveal a massive hole in the center of the dock.
And from the depths of that hole rose a submarine.
At least, Claire assumed it was a submarine. It looked more like a bullet, or maybe a pill, tapered at either end so it could shoot seamlessly through water. The center of the sub was glass, revealing a large bed made up in white linens. Two wooden tables holding glass lamps stood at either side of the bed, but other than that, there were no furnishings.
“What the fuck,” Claire breathed, low enough that no one was supposed to hear. But Ash did, of course, and he shot her an unreadable look from the corner of his reddened eye.
The floor at least seemed steady again. Gingerly, she pushed off from the wall, only slightly wobbly in her heels.
The Ashburys weren’t looking at the submarine—the Poseidon, named for a god, which seemed fitting—they were all looking at her instead. But it wasn’t with the pleased expectancy of someone waiting to be congratulated. Instead, the looks on their faces were almost… nervous.
It made Claire nervous in turn. Did these people care that much about what she thought of their million-dollar submarine?
Next to her, the slosh of a bottle. Ash taking another tiny drink. He was rationing it, making it last.
“It’s…” She cast around for something other than nice or cool, pedestrian words that meant nothing at all. “It looks really safe.”
She grimaced, but it was apparently the right thing to say, because Audrey beamed, nodding vigorously. “Oh, absolutely. You’re just as safe sleeping in there as you are in a hotel room.”
“A five-star one,” Wellington added with a blustery laugh. “Not a Best Western.”
“We save the real classism for after dinner,” Ash muttered around the neck of the whiskey bottle.
His family ignored him. “That’s been the biggest point of contention from investors, you know.” Patrick gestured to the Poseidon, his other arm wrapped around Dierdre’s stiff shoulders. “People think it can’t possibly be safe to go leagues deep in a commercial vessel. Especially after that OceanGate mess. But the materials we used are military grade and nigh indestructible, and the steering system is state of the art—you just turn the key and plug in your destination, like a phone GPS. Ashbury Marinography actually follows all OSHA guidelines.” He rapped his knuckles against the glass hull of the sub. The thunk echoed.
Dierdre started at the sound. She seemed like she wanted to get away from her husband, out from under his arm, but she was too preoccupied with looking at the sub. Her expression was one Claire couldn’t quite read, her eyes fixed on the pristine bed under the glass, her lips twisted to the side.
“You’re safer in there than you are on land,” Greg added proudly.
Wellington grinned at the Poseidon, his eyes sliding in Claire’s direction. “We give the sea respect,” he said, “and it gives us safety.”
Next to her, Ash scoffed and took another drink.
But the rest of the family watched her, almost as if they wanted to see how she’d react. Still with that nervous energy, a frisson of anxiety, the air before a thunderstorm.”
![Read a Terrifying Excerpt From Hannah Whitten’s ‘Reliquary’ [Exclusive]](https://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Reliquary-High-Resolution.jpg)
