DEJIKHAN

Bound by Fire and Blood

I was raised to kill the Dragon-King. Instead, I put my blade to his throat and found I couldn’t finish the job. Kessa Draven clawed her way up from a soldier's orphan to the youngest general Vaelmoor has ever crowned, and she has spent her whole life proving she belongs in rooms built for men twice her rank. When her king sends her across enemy lines on a single mission — kill Rhaegar Vaelthorn, the Dragon-King of Ashvale, and end the war in one stroke — she gets close enough to do it. She doesn't. He doesn't kill her either, though he easily could. Instead he looks at her like he's found something he lost a long time ago, and lets her walk away. Branded a failed assassin and a suspected traitor, Kessa is stripped of her command and thrown back onto the front lines to earn her rank back in blood. But the war she's spent her life fighting was never what she was told it was, and the enemy king she couldn't kill keeps finding reasons to spare her again. As the truth about her own blood surfaces — a truth both kingdoms buried in fire two generations ago — Kessa has to decide whether the crown she serves deserves her sword at all.