“This is a story that made me bleed for the characters, hate the institutions of the world, and yet never want to put down… The romantasy sapphics deserve? Very much so…” 

— Issy Waldrom

FROM AMAZON BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF ROMANCE AND FANTASY, AOIBH WOOD.

The Crucible: the Empire's brutal war academy, where the Aethyr-born are forged into weapons and attachment is a cri
Aethyrim like Mora Dray don't enroll. They're delivered. 

Property of the Empire, trained to kill, they’re culled when they break.

Mora Dray walks through the gates with quick knives, a closed mouth, and a secret that will hang her if anyone looks too closely. So the plan is the one that's kept her breathing this long: be nobody. Head down, scores middling, name off every list. She has invisible down to an art.

Nobody warned her about those violet eyes and that sweep of purple hair.

Liora Skaggs, combat instructor, knife-scarred, lethal by trade and worse by reputation. She’s the most dangerous woman in the Crucible, and when she looks across a crowded training yard she sees Mora for who she is. Not the quiet candidate. Not the middling scores. Her. And being seen by Skaggs doesn't feel like the death sentence it should.

It feels like the first time anyone's ever said her name.

With Skaggs, every rule bends. Keep quiet becomes stand out. Stay hidden becomes midnight battles in borrowed leather. Stay alive, stay alive goes out the window somewhere around their first sparring session.

But they’re both property, and property isn't supposed to want things, especially not love. Wanting Skaggs is the first thing Mora has ever done just for herself, and she is stupid with it, reckless with it, starving with it.

Beyond the walls, the war she was built for is creeping closer.

Her secret could get her killed.

Skaggs almost certainly will.

She can't get enough.