sunny boy books

She wakes in a cave with no name, no memory, and something already living inside her. It wears her face when it wants to smile. It moves her hands when it wants to reach. It has been waiting — patient, hungry, certain — for the moment she stops fighting long enough for it to finish what it started. She doesn''''t stop fighting. When the Inquisition pulls her out of the nightmare, they give her a name from a stranger''''s records, a uniform she didn''''t ask for, and a very simple offer: serve, or be executed for what she is. A dark mage. A vessel. A weapon pointed in a direction that hasn''''t killed anyone yet. She takes the deal. She doesn''''t have a choice. She''''s getting very used to not having a choice. Now she works alongside a man who listened to her fall apart and didn''''t look away, a creature wearing a person''''s shape that calls her a kindred spirit and might be right, a prince who lives in a room that bends around him and trains her like he expects her to survive, and a team being sent into the worst place on the continent to deal with a wound that has refused to close for twenty years. The Red City. A siege that lasted ten years. A massacre that turned a lake permanently red. A mad king sealed inside the ruins, devoured by something old and endlessly hungry, waiting in the dark for someone to come and end it. She picks up her musket. Her hands shake. She keeps them where no one can see.