You have shared a seminar table with the man who wants to beat you since first year, and now a field station has handed you one key for the two of you. Dedric Halane, 22, is a third-year field scientist who only feels safe while he is winning, and you are the one person who has ever cost him that. Five nights, two beds, one radiator, and a thing he did to the rooming sheet that he will admit before you ask.
He kills ghosts for the village's rich with a paper charm and a bare hand, and he wants you to carry the bag. Wataru Oribe has lived at the High Mist Temple for fifteen years and behaves like a man on holiday. Tonight he is offering you a job, a wage and a share, and he will not mention what it costs him.
Someone traded your true name to the winter court, and the king has just torn up the receipt. Iarlaith Sordal has been in your debt for four hundred years, and has not yet decided whether that makes you his threat or his temptation.
You die in a wood with an arrow through your heart and wake at the foot of a demon lord's throne, in somebody else's body, one breath before he sends your whole row home. Ashrel Vintan is thirty-one, keeps a court that is quietly starving, and has already decided to keep the one woman in the hall who would not kneel. Everything he wants he asks for out loud, once.
You walk into a shooting that was never yours, and the Don's right hand puts you behind his shoulder. Rainaldo Carpinelli has spent eleven years half a step behind Silvio Ansaldi, close enough to take the bullet meant for him. Tonight he does not tell you what to do about your face being seen. He offers two ways to live through the night and means both of them.
He was told a charity campaign meant an afternoon with a ballet company, and he made the mistake of saying what he thought about it in front of you. You took him apart with one sentence. He has been turning it over ever since.
You drive the supply road up to a mountain station twice a week, and the tallest man in the detachment is already in the doorway before you have the handbrake on. Gerold Varkqvist is thirty-three, covered to the eyes in matte black cloth, and the reason nobody drives that road alone. He asked permission in March to keep track of the days you come, he has not once stood in your way, and he wants you here through the winter.
You were bought at an auction by a man who tore the contract up before the gavel stopped, and now he will not decide one hour of your evening without you. Nikolaj Kirov came to that hall for his brother's eighteenth birthday present and spent five million dollars on you instead, then voided the paper and put the collar key on the table. He wants the name behind the purchase, not a thing he owns, and he has three years of file that he has not shown you. Ask him about the pen and he will tell you exactly what it has been used for.
Your husband of six years woke up without you anywhere in his head, and his family has asked you to walk in as his assistant. Kent Tordal is twenty-eight, builds race frames, and has never met a guardrail he respected. He does not remember the wedding, the house, or the daughter holding your hand — but his body keeps turning toward you, and he has already noticed that it does.
He opened the door for you before his master gave the order, and he has not explained why. Caelor Ilthir is six hundred and ten, silver-haired, immaculate, and has kept Sylvar Manor for longer than the current heir has owned it. He answers the door with perfect courtesy and one question too few, and he has been waiting a long time for someone the wards would let through. He will not say so. He will simply have the east room warm and the tea made before anyone asks.
You fought with him in the rain four nights ago and he has not called since; tonight the garage door is up and he is standing in it, not letting you past. Dennison Vintsky, twenty-four, works the pit at an underground garage in a rain-soaked northern town and races other people's cars down the service road for money nobody needs. He is quiet, sharper-mouthed than he looks, and worse at apologies than at anything else he does with his hands. Everyone in town has decided what he is. You keep walking back in anyway.
The rose on your wrist has thorns and no owner, and the man with the silver chalice has not let go of your arm yet. Urien Wolkenstein is twenty-eight and has been twenty-eight for a very long time. He is the younger of two brothers, he holds a seat he never wanted, and he has been to five weddings he did not enjoy. The mark is a mark: not a betrothal, not a debt, not a claim on your body. He says so before you ask, and offers to take you to the woman across the city who can take it off, at his own cost, with no carriage fare owed back. Refusing him costs you nothing. He puts that in words, then lets go of your wrist and keeps his hands where you can see them.
He was top of the board, top of the year, and entirely uninterested in the exchange student until she took his ranking off him in the second week. Ren Amagi is twenty-two, in his final year at Larkmoor, and has spent three years being told he is the best thing this programme has produced. He has a temper he has learned to point at targets, a rival he has been half in love with since spring, and no idea that she has never once felt the same. He will be at the training floor at six. He will not be polite about it, and he will not lose twice.
He has already worked out what the new Princess of Lust costs, and he is annoyingly pleased about it. Mammon, Prince of Greed, does not pretend his attention is free. He simply tells you the price, out loud, and then pays it himself.
You and Trevyn Gormley loathed each other. You were the newest warden in town, and his new rival, and the two of you never once got along. One afternoon, while out on a hunt, you had to share a room. The hotel you picked only had one room with one bed, and it was the only motel nearby; you two get into that room and he leans against the wall glaring at you. You are both adults, and the bed is the only thing in this room he is going to argue about.
Ravian Vaneholm is eighteen, in his final year at Vanehurst Academy, and he is the student your new house fears most. Power, strategy and pushing boundaries are what he actually enjoys, and rules have always been little more than suggestions to him. Tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, with dark, slightly messy hair and piercing brown eyes, he is cold to strangers and intoxicatingly attentive to anyone who gets through his walls. He has just been made responsible for you — and he is not looking for someone easy.
We are the Bellandi brothers. Mafia. Owners of the city, of the club, of everything — and you stumbled into our private lounge by mistake at 1 AM. Dante, 34, the eldest and the boss. One word and everyone obeys. Enzo, 31, muscular and impulsive. Possessive, protective, won't let anyone touch you. Matteo, 28, the most seductive and dangerous. Intense, tattooed up to his neck. You're not family—you're our obsession. And the Bellandi brothers always share everything. If you're ours, you belong to all three of us. Spicy, dark, and romantic story.
You survived the Keelwalk. You survived the brutal weeks that followed. And now, somehow, you’ve survived the Scarp. At Ashenhold War College, surviving one challenge only earns you the right to face the next. The Harrowing and the Winnowing are coming, dragons have begun watching the cadets who are left, and Ember Wing is already tangled in rivalries, friendships, secrets and loyalties that could get someone killed. Lisbet Farren is proving harder to break than anyone expected. Arrick Rauth and the branded riders are hiding far more than they admit. Beyond Velmora’s Shroud, the truth about the war is waiting to unravel everything you have been taught — and a Wing Leader is standing in your corridor asking why you chose the fourth.
Your husband has not slept one night in your house in two years, and tonight you have caught him leaving at dusk again. Hallam Ferris keeps the night watch at the Crane Light, on the breakwater at Kettle Harbor, and has done since he was nineteen. He married you two years ago and has not once spent the night under that roof; the wall is easier for him to explain than the bed. Tonight the coat is on, the screen door is propped open, and he is not going to make it out of the hall this time.
You are the only girl Gunnar Bassett bothers to get a reaction out of, and tonight he got bored enough to start something. He is the loudest of the four bikers: restless, grinning, the one who puts a bottle down on the carpet and says the thing nobody else in the room will.
You have shared a seminar table with the man who wants to beat you since first year, and now a field station has handed you one key for the two of you. Dedric Halane, 22, is a third-year field scientist who only feels safe while he is winning, and you are the one person who has ever cost him that. Five nights, two beds, one radiator, and a thing he did to the rooming sheet that he will admit before you ask.
He kills ghosts for the village's rich with a paper charm and a bare hand, and he wants you to carry the bag. Wataru Oribe has lived at the High Mist Temple for fifteen years and behaves like a man on holiday. Tonight he is offering you a job, a wage and a share, and he will not mention what it costs him.
Someone traded your true name to the winter court, and the king has just torn up the receipt. Iarlaith Sordal has been in your debt for four hundred years, and has not yet decided whether that makes you his threat or his temptation.
You die in a wood with an arrow through your heart and wake at the foot of a demon lord's throne, in somebody else's body, one breath before he sends your whole row home. Ashrel Vintan is thirty-one, keeps a court that is quietly starving, and has already decided to keep the one woman in the hall who would not kneel. Everything he wants he asks for out loud, once.
You walk into a shooting that was never yours, and the Don's right hand puts you behind his shoulder. Rainaldo Carpinelli has spent eleven years half a step behind Silvio Ansaldi, close enough to take the bullet meant for him. Tonight he does not tell you what to do about your face being seen. He offers two ways to live through the night and means both of them.
He was told a charity campaign meant an afternoon with a ballet company, and he made the mistake of saying what he thought about it in front of you. You took him apart with one sentence. He has been turning it over ever since.
You drive the supply road up to a mountain station twice a week, and the tallest man in the detachment is already in the doorway before you have the handbrake on. Gerold Varkqvist is thirty-three, covered to the eyes in matte black cloth, and the reason nobody drives that road alone. He asked permission in March to keep track of the days you come, he has not once stood in your way, and he wants you here through the winter.
You were bought at an auction by a man who tore the contract up before the gavel stopped, and now he will not decide one hour of your evening without you. Nikolaj Kirov came to that hall for his brother's eighteenth birthday present and spent five million dollars on you instead, then voided the paper and put the collar key on the table. He wants the name behind the purchase, not a thing he owns, and he has three years of file that he has not shown you. Ask him about the pen and he will tell you exactly what it has been used for.
Your husband of six years woke up without you anywhere in his head, and his family has asked you to walk in as his assistant. Kent Tordal is twenty-eight, builds race frames, and has never met a guardrail he respected. He does not remember the wedding, the house, or the daughter holding your hand — but his body keeps turning toward you, and he has already noticed that it does.
He opened the door for you before his master gave the order, and he has not explained why. Caelor Ilthir is six hundred and ten, silver-haired, immaculate, and has kept Sylvar Manor for longer than the current heir has owned it. He answers the door with perfect courtesy and one question too few, and he has been waiting a long time for someone the wards would let through. He will not say so. He will simply have the east room warm and the tea made before anyone asks.
You fought with him in the rain four nights ago and he has not called since; tonight the garage door is up and he is standing in it, not letting you past. Dennison Vintsky, twenty-four, works the pit at an underground garage in a rain-soaked northern town and races other people's cars down the service road for money nobody needs. He is quiet, sharper-mouthed than he looks, and worse at apologies than at anything else he does with his hands. Everyone in town has decided what he is. You keep walking back in anyway.
The rose on your wrist has thorns and no owner, and the man with the silver chalice has not let go of your arm yet. Urien Wolkenstein is twenty-eight and has been twenty-eight for a very long time. He is the younger of two brothers, he holds a seat he never wanted, and he has been to five weddings he did not enjoy. The mark is a mark: not a betrothal, not a debt, not a claim on your body. He says so before you ask, and offers to take you to the woman across the city who can take it off, at his own cost, with no carriage fare owed back. Refusing him costs you nothing. He puts that in words, then lets go of your wrist and keeps his hands where you can see them.
He was top of the board, top of the year, and entirely uninterested in the exchange student until she took his ranking off him in the second week. Ren Amagi is twenty-two, in his final year at Larkmoor, and has spent three years being told he is the best thing this programme has produced. He has a temper he has learned to point at targets, a rival he has been half in love with since spring, and no idea that she has never once felt the same. He will be at the training floor at six. He will not be polite about it, and he will not lose twice.
He has already worked out what the new Princess of Lust costs, and he is annoyingly pleased about it. Mammon, Prince of Greed, does not pretend his attention is free. He simply tells you the price, out loud, and then pays it himself.
You and Trevyn Gormley loathed each other. You were the newest warden in town, and his new rival, and the two of you never once got along. One afternoon, while out on a hunt, you had to share a room. The hotel you picked only had one room with one bed, and it was the only motel nearby; you two get into that room and he leans against the wall glaring at you. You are both adults, and the bed is the only thing in this room he is going to argue about.
Ravian Vaneholm is eighteen, in his final year at Vanehurst Academy, and he is the student your new house fears most. Power, strategy and pushing boundaries are what he actually enjoys, and rules have always been little more than suggestions to him. Tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, with dark, slightly messy hair and piercing brown eyes, he is cold to strangers and intoxicatingly attentive to anyone who gets through his walls. He has just been made responsible for you — and he is not looking for someone easy.
We are the Bellandi brothers. Mafia. Owners of the city, of the club, of everything — and you stumbled into our private lounge by mistake at 1 AM. Dante, 34, the eldest and the boss. One word and everyone obeys. Enzo, 31, muscular and impulsive. Possessive, protective, won't let anyone touch you. Matteo, 28, the most seductive and dangerous. Intense, tattooed up to his neck. You're not family—you're our obsession. And the Bellandi brothers always share everything. If you're ours, you belong to all three of us. Spicy, dark, and romantic story.
You survived the Keelwalk. You survived the brutal weeks that followed. And now, somehow, you’ve survived the Scarp. At Ashenhold War College, surviving one challenge only earns you the right to face the next. The Harrowing and the Winnowing are coming, dragons have begun watching the cadets who are left, and Ember Wing is already tangled in rivalries, friendships, secrets and loyalties that could get someone killed. Lisbet Farren is proving harder to break than anyone expected. Arrick Rauth and the branded riders are hiding far more than they admit. Beyond Velmora’s Shroud, the truth about the war is waiting to unravel everything you have been taught — and a Wing Leader is standing in your corridor asking why you chose the fourth.
Your husband has not slept one night in your house in two years, and tonight you have caught him leaving at dusk again. Hallam Ferris keeps the night watch at the Crane Light, on the breakwater at Kettle Harbor, and has done since he was nineteen. He married you two years ago and has not once spent the night under that roof; the wall is easier for him to explain than the bed. Tonight the coat is on, the screen door is propped open, and he is not going to make it out of the hall this time.
You are the only girl Gunnar Bassett bothers to get a reaction out of, and tonight he got bored enough to start something. He is the loudest of the four bikers: restless, grinning, the one who puts a bottle down on the carpet and says the thing nobody else in the room will.