Never Keep

Ransom throws Everest at magical death, but the barrier lets her live

Everest Arcadia, a twenty-year-old water Fae outcast, sprints through the night as her half-brother Ransom and his allies chase her with rocks across the outskirts of Castelorain.

Ransom throws Everest at magical death, but the barrier lets her live

Everest Arcadia, a twenty-year-old water Fae outcast, sprints through the night as her half-brother Ransom and his allies chase her with rocks across the outskirts of Castelorain. Cornered at The Boundary—the magical wall supposedly lethal to anyone who touches it—Ransom shoves her headfirst into it. Instead of dying, Everest passes through and goes careening down an icy slope into the deadly wasteland below. Above her, the floating island Ironwraith descends from the clouds: Skyforgers launching an attack on her town. Trapped in the wasteland with mechanical beasts prowling below and war igniting above, Everest fashions climbing tools from a monster's severed claws and hauls herself back through The Boundary unscathed. The supposed death sentence was a lie. But war waits on the other side, and her mother is at the heart of it.

Vesper raids Castelorain while Flamebringers slip through the chaos

Vesper—known across the warring lands as the Sky Witch—leads the aerial assault on Castelorain from her windrider, flanked by her sisters-in-arms Dalia and Moraine. At twenty, she has not yet Awakened her air magic, but six years of bloodshed under Prince Dragor's command have made her a legend of sword and blood magic. Her mission: extract a kidnapped Basilisk shifter being milked for venom in The Forge. A stranger named Cayde Avior arrives on Dragor's orders to shadow her unit, immune to the seductive allure of her Succubus Order—a first that deeply irritates her. They retrieve their target from The Forge's basement, but encounter masked Flamebringers who detonate a fire device in the tunnels. Cayde shields Vesper with his fireproof Drake wings, saving her life and creating a debt she resents owing.

Basilisk fire rains down, and one mother gives everything Everest races into The Forge to warn her mother Kaylina of the incoming attack. Instead she finds two masked Flamebringers. The larger one—brutally handsome, eyes black as pitch—strikes his swords together, sending fire toward barrels of Basilisk venom. The explosion rains acidic venom across the room. Kaylina throws herself over Everest, casting ice to shield them both while the venom devours her back and bones. Everest's left palm catches the splash, scarring it beyond any healing magic's reach. Her mother's dying command: find who did this and never rest. Harlon Brook, Everest's closest friend and fierce bear shifter, pulls her from the wreckage. The killer's face—those soulless black eyes—sears itself into her memory. She vows upon…