Why am I holding onto the sand that slips between my fingertips, when all I'm really trying to do is forget? When Cassie and her friends are shipped off to boarding school 4 years ago, in the 7th grade, their secrets from the past follow them. Now, in their junior and senior year, with her night terrors steadily worsening, her occasionally over-protective brother leaving her the following year on a full-ride hockey scholarship, a crumbling social life, and not to mention the murder of her mother from eleven years ago being brought back to the surface, Cassie finds herself wanting nothing more than to unravel the truth, and escape the demons of her past. Everyone at Thornwood has their secrets. But they won't be secrets for much longer.

2014 Copyright © A. M. Forest All Rights Reserved Guardinals: once a powerful title held by warriors, now a powerful title held by barbarians. After the brutal Celestial Brethren War, the Guardinals and shifters like them were banished to the realm Guardia to live the rest of their lives, away from the mortal world. With their skills no longer used for protecting, the Elders turned warriors into gladiators. One thousand mortal years later, the last Relic Dragon is on the verge of becoming a Guardinal. Her name is Apolla. Blood and glory is what she knows best. Three hundred years after mastering every battle art known to her world, she earned the mark of the Guardinal by killing every enemy she met with blue flames. That was until another Guardinal Ward was destroyed. Now with a threat of a dangerous opponent and new arrivals coming to her Ward, she is forced to do something she never knew was an option: teach. Being threatened into doing it wasn't sitting well with her, so her trusted companions dig for the truth as she does what she's told. Journey through Apolla's struggle to find herself and protect the ones she loves as she tries to uncover the truth behind her past, her present, her future and the future of those closest to her.