The Bovi people have never been accepted. Marked by traits that set them apart from the rest of humanity, they are shunned, feared, and branded as monsters. Denied peace and survival, they are forced into the shadows, relying on acts of terror to strike back at a world that would see them erased. Their resistance, desperate and violent, ignites a war with a powerful neighboring empire. Into this storm steps Vespera, a young soldier fresh from training, loyal to her Emperor and determined to prove herself. But the battlefield is nothing like the order and honor she was promised. She finds herself caught in the blood-soaked middle ground, where assassinations, ambushes, and massacres are tools of survival-and no side's hands are clean. As the war escalates, Vespera is pulled deeper into the gray spaces between duty and morality. The Bovi fight for existence, the Empire for dominance, and she is forced to bear witness to the corruption of ideals she once believed unshakable. Her faith in the Emperor-revered as incorruptible and just, begins to waver with every shadowed truth revealed. Now, Vespera must choose: remain the loyal soldier and blind herself to the blood on her hands, or risk everything to confront the possibility that the true monster may not be the Bovi at all... but the very Empire she swore to protect.

When a knight-in-training sets out on a dragonquest to win the hand of a fair princess, he expects to return in time for a pavilion wedding in the fall. But after fifty years of tracking his quarry across godforsaken hinterlands, he is starting to wonder if he has the stamina to finish the job.