Bestselling Amazon author of The Frost Chronicles, Kate Avery Ellison, delivers a fantasy novel packed with clever betrayals, surprising twists, and many moments of delicious vindication for its scrappy heroine. This is a must-read for fans of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass, Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study, Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief, and Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes.

This is the clever, heartbreaking, intricate YA fantasy you’ve always wanted to read.

Briand Varryda has always been too clever for her own good. She’s quick with knives and even quicker with cards. She can scramble up a castle wall. She can ride a bad-tempered stallion with her arms tied behind her back.

But it’s never been enough. She’s useless in the eyes of everyone on her uncle’s estate. A guttersnipe. An orphan. An annoyance. Even Kael, the handsome, enigmatic steward of her uncle who has protected her from her uncle’s wrath too many times already, sees her as nothing but trouble to him.

But when Briand drinks of vial of poisoned venom that grants the drinker the power to control dragons, she becomes the opposite of useless.

She becomes the one thing that might win the war.

Kael, she quickly discovers, is a Monarchist spy. Leader of a band of rebels. About to embark on a dangerous mission. And he and his crew desperately need Briand’s new skills.

Nobody is happy about the situation, least of all Briand, but she doesn’t have a choice. Terrifying magic users called Seekers are now hunting her and her powers. She is plunged into a world of danger, betrayal, and secrets. A world in which friends turn into traitors. A world in which she might be falling for Kael. A world in which she is determined to prove that she is not useless.

Briand is going to need all her cleverness to survive.

Don’t miss the second book in this addictive series, A Bed of Blades!