The Ember Oath

Lyra Vessren came to Ashfall for one reason. If she finds it, the rest of the academy can burn.

Three years ago, the empire told her her brother was dead. Three years ago, his folded letter came home with the wrong date. Now Lyra is at the imperial military academy he disappeared from - undeclared, hidden in plain sight, hunting the truth her family was supposed to swallow.

The academy has other plans. There is a duty-dance. A bonded dragon who chose her commanding officer eleven years ago. A bureaucratic uncle whose decorations cost lives. A squad of three who become the family Lyra didn't intend to find - Mira the healer with her own stolen sister, Aric the Pyrrhan boy who deflects everything with jokes and means none of them, Thorne who barely speaks and would kill for any of them.

And Major Kaelen Draeve. Cold. Decorated. Dangerous. The officer assigned to her adjutant duty - and the man whose plain dagger carries the initial of someone he once swore to protect.

Behind every command of Lyra's first year is a six-hundred-year lie about the Veil that severs the empire from the wild. The empire will kill to keep it buried. Her brother might be alive on the other side of it.

To find him, she'll have to cross the wall the empire built. She won't be crossing alone.

━━━

For readers of Rebecca Yarros, Naomi Novik, and Olivie Blake. A slow-burn romantasy with literary teeth - found family, dragon-bonded magic, an enemies-to-lovers dynamic that earns every restraint, and a heroine who notices everything and forgives nothing. Book one of the Ashfall Academy trilogy.