Bright Burns the Flame

Some prisons have bars. Ashthorn Ward has something far worse—it turns people into weapons.

Nineteen-year-old Lory has survived Dunai's brutal streets on stolen bread, sharp blades, and sharper instincts. Getting caught was never part of the plan. Neither was being conscripted into the kingdom's most feared military academy, where rivals will slit your throat before dawn and failure means you don't walk out at all. Lory has beaten worse odds. She tells herself that often enough to almost believe it.

Then the Ward discovers what runs through her veins—something ancient, something dangerous—and suddenly Lory isn't just another conscript. She's a weapon worth forging. The deal is brutal in its simplicity: survive every trial they throw at her, and she serves the crown. Fall short, and Ashthorn becomes her grave.

Standing between Lory and survival is Captain Khayrivven Falcrest—cold, merciless, and infuriatingly unreadable. He isn't her ally. He isn't meant to be anything to her at all. Yet in the suffocating darkness of Ashthorn, where trust is a luxury no one can afford, something shifts between them. Something forbidden. Something that could destroy them both more thoroughly than any trial the Ward designs.

In a world where power is currency and loyalty is the cruelest trap, Lory must decide what she's truly willing to burn—and whether the flame consuming her has a name she's not ready to speak.