Smash your competition baby

After surviving the Great War by a stroke of fate, 13-year-old Tyrone thought he'd found paradise when Natalia and Ivan Toeigh, Anca's elite darlings, took him in, fed him, trained him, dressed him in gold, and paraded him like their prized little miracle. In a land where Liban children were rarely seen as more than rubble and ash, Tyrone had made it.

Or so he thought.

Until the banquet.
Until the ground opened beneath his feet.

Now, dumped in an arena with other Liban orphans and mechanical beasts programmed to kill, Tyrone must use every inch of the polished training they gave him, training he now realizes wasn't to protect him, but to weaponize him.

Trapped in a death game where the only rule is kill or be killed, Tyrone must choose:
Obey the twisted woman who dressed him in silk and called him son...
Or become something else entirely.

Found family was a lie.
Royalty doesn't adopt-they recruit.
And the only thing sharper than the blades in Tyrone's hands is the betrayal in his heart.