The Dead King

Even a healer's hands are capable of abominable things.

Seventeen-year-old herbalist Maira Hollis wants nothing more than a peaceful existence on her family's rural estate. Then war arrives at her doorstep. An undead force, led by a vicious necromancer, captures her father and leaves her home in ruins.

Desperate to rescue her father, Maira mistakes a continental soldier for the enemy. She attacks him with forbidden magic, stealing his breath with the touch of her hand. Facing execution for the crime, she strikes a bargain with the king: deliver the necromancer's head to keep her own.

A teenage girl with a green thumb and untested magic isn't the champion the kingdoms hoped for. But the monarchs have nothing to lose, and Maira would face death itself to see her family safely home. Alongside a runaway royal bastard, she travels the seven territories to rally a patchwork army of her own. But when the continent's rulers prove consumed by power, Maira is torn between allegiance to her homeland and the festering secrets that define it.

As her magic leads her down darker paths, and with the continent's future hanging in the balance, she must decide for whom she'll fight - and risk becoming a monster herself.