Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
For Brynla Aihr, crime and survival have always gone hand in hand. Ever since she escaped the fanatical dragon-worshipping cult that controls her homeland, she’s had to carve out a life doing the stealing dragon eggs. Egg theft is illegal and, in most cases, fatal. To breach a dragon's nest means a harrowing journey through the ancient wards spelled to keep the monstrous beasts confined. Dragons can’t get out and only those with a death wish can get in.
Despite the risks, dragon eggs are highly coveted for their magic. A black market flourishes under competing criminal empires, and Brynla’s loyalty has always been to the highest bidder. Until she finds herself kidnapped and blackmailed by Lord Andor, a formidable lieutenant of House Kolbeck, and thrust into the dangerous political games of rivaling dynasties.
Brynla and Andor clash at every turn, sparking heat in ways Brynla’s never felt before. But in a world that’s prophesized to return to the dragons, and rife with betrayal and secrets at every turn…how close to the flames is she willing to stand?
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Prologue
They gave the girl a new name when they first brought her into the convent, discarding her old one like an oily rag that dirties more than it cleans. “Daughter of Pain,” the ancient woman had christened her with a quick sweep of cataracted eyes. “I see it deep within you, even the pain you haven’t yet faced.”
The girl didn’t give a damn what the woman saw. Pain? She felt only rage at that point, a living and breathing vessel of anger that had been simmering to toxic levels ever since her parents died. But that wasn’t what the Harbringer saw as the girl was brought into the Great Hall of Zoreth on the first day of her initiation. She saw the physical pain in the girl’s body. Not just the fury and the grief and frustration at a life being shattered to fragments—every Daughter of Silence was suffering, after all—but the pain that was deeper inside yet, waiting to come out when she became a woman. A pain that would debilitate the girl and lead her on a desperate quest for relief, a quest that would combine with vengeance.
But at that moment, as the girl was stripped of her old name and her clothes and put into the black cloak that covered every inch of her skin, her eyebrows and her head shaved, her lavender hair discarded in spools on the marble floor, the last proof of what she was, a girl born under the lavender moon, there was only that slithering, seething rage.
All the girl’s life her parents had fought against this very institution. They fought against the cruelty of the convent, the hypocrisy of the religion itself, the dictatorship that ruled over the Saints of Fire and those who followed it. Indeed the people of Esland had no choice but to follow it. They told the girl that she could not help being born in Esland but that they would spend every living minute trying to change it for the better.
Her parents did their best to change it. But their best was not enough.
They should have known this would happen to me, the girl thought as the old woman took her roughly by the elbow and led her out of the cleansing room and back into the quiet halls. They should have known that all their risks for a better tomorrow would land me here one day.
The towering obsidian walls and ceilings around her gleamed from frequent polishing, making it look like the girl was being led into the dark belly of a dragon, which was no accident. The convent wanted to instill fear into these girls. They were here to be punished, not to be pious. Punishment was always the point of the Daughters of Silence, no matter how their public façade spun it.
The girl shut her eyes as the image of her father’s last moments slammed into her head, as if that would prevent her from seeing it. Him standing on the gallows block. The defiant look in his emerald eyes, his long dark purple-streaked braid captured by the wind that held the decay of low tide that stretched outside the city walls of the capital. He was so proud even in those last moments, except for that very last moment when he looked to the girl and her mother, who had been captured by the Black Guard and forced to watch at the foot of the gallows. In that split second the girl didn’t see defiance or anger or even fear. Just sorrow. Like he was cloaked in the grief he knew would befall his two most beloved people after he took his last breath.
And she watched him take his last breath. Watched as the bottom dropped out from under his feet, as it dropped from beneath everything she held dear, and as that rope winched up and sliced into his throat and chin. Her father didn’t cry out, didn’t thrash, like he was willing his body to go as silently as possible. And while her mother wailed and buried her head in her hands, the girl kept watching, knowing that the twelve years she had with him in her life wouldn’t be enough and to take every last glimpse of him, no matter how gruesome, even if the image would be burned in her head for years to come.
“You should be afraid,” the Harbringer had whispered in her ear, her breath smelling foul, like the fermented herbs that the cloisters burned at all hours of the day. “You must fear the gods or you will live and die in vain.”
The girl opened her eyes at that, feeling just a thread of the defiance that her father wore so well. She saw the statues of the dragons before her, their so-called gods. There were two carved of the smaller varieties, the sycledrages that were known to be as smart as a dune fox, with sickle claws on their monstrous feet. The woman thought her eyes were closed because of them, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. The girl didn’t fear dragons, not in the ways the Saints of Fire followers did. Her fear was healthy; their fear was not. Their fear would ruin all Esland one day, if not the world.