I started reading Courtney Schafer’s Shattered Sigil trilogy for the first time last fall. That turned out to be great timing—entirely unplanned on my part—because the third book, The Labyrinth of Flame, was released in December. If you’ve been following Courtney on Twitter, or following fantasy publishing news over the last few years, you’ll know that The Labyrinth of Flame had a pretty tortuous route to publication. To make a long story short, fans who’d been faithfully following Shattered Sigil from the beginning had a three-year wait between books two and three; I only had to wait a couple weeks.

Shattered Sigil is a complex adventure fantasy set in a world where elemental magic is part of the fabric of society. It’s sometimes dark, always exciting. The first book introduces us to Dev—a smart-mouthed former thief and sometime smuggler who works as an outrider, guiding caravans across the Whitefire Mountains—and Kiran, a blood mage trying to escape his sadistic master. Both are haunted by demons from their pasts—in Kiran’s case, literally. Over the course of the trilogy, Dev and Kiran must navigate treachery and tragedy, trying to find peace for themselves and their world.

Courtney graciously agreed to answer some burning questions I had upon finishing The Labyrinth of Flame (no pun intended). Fair warning if you haven’t read the books: there are mild spoilers below.

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