The Library of Amorlin

Book 0: Age of Beasts

by Kalyn Josephson

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure

Synopsis

A brilliant con artist and a secretive librarian collide in New York Times bestselling author Kalyn Josephson’s enchanting adult fantasy debut packed with twists, tricks, slowburn romantic tension, and magical creatures -- perfect for fans of S.A. MacLean, Mai Corland, and K.A. Linde.

“Absolutely fantastic—I couldn't put this book down! A stunning, absorbing, and timely tale about a wondrous library, magical beasts, and a conwoman with both everything and nothing to lose. I loved it!” —Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop

Kasira used to be a masterful con artist: choosing her target, building trust, judging the precise moment to make her move. Now, she’s working off a lengthy prison sentence by hunting dangerous magical creatures on behalf of the fanatical kingdom of Kalthos.

But Kasira’s past catches up to her when the ambassador from Kalthos arrives at her camp with a deal: her freedom in exchange for infiltrating and destabilizing the magical institution meant to protect all six kingdoms—the Library of Amorlin.

When Kasira assumes the role of the new Assistant Librarian, she enters an enchanting world brimming with books and beasts, tempting her with a life she can never have. But Kasira’s real future depends on her long con to bring down the Librarian. Unfortunately, Allaster is as prickly as he is handsome, and his monstrous secrets are about to catch up with them both . . .

Release date: March 3, 2026

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

KASIRA SWORE TWO OATHS THE DAY SHE JOINED THE MALIKINAR: the first to her unit, to slay any beast she laid eyes on; and the other to herself, that she would survive.

She never thought it would be so damn hard.

The darkness of the Isherwood yawned around her, an assemblage of crooked branches and ink-green leaves tipped in barbs as fine as bone dust. The swampy forest ringed nearly seventy percent of Kalthos’s borders, its depths densely populated with the continent’s most dangerous beasts.

Her boots sank into the wet earth with every step, her hand curled around the hilt of the vylor blade on her back. She had split off from the main body of her unit several paces back. Though every Malik was an elite beast slayer, their talent lay in their brutal skill with a sword, not the silence with which they stepped, and the Alkatir they hunted would hear them coming.

She didn’t want to be there when the beasts struck.

“Kas!” hissed a voice, and she slowed as Revna picked her way through the brush. Her friend tore free of a vine with a curse, and Kasira flinched, listening for the sound of paws in the undergrowth. It was quiet. The small clearing they occupied could have been another world for how silent it was, how still. The Isherwood had a way of swallowing sound. No one ever heard you scream.

It reminded her of her prison cell.

“What are you doing out here?” Revna demanded.

“Hunting.”

“You’re breaking procedure. Again.”

Kasira gave her a knowing look, and her friend glowered firmly back. Revna’s scarlet curls were tied back with a strip of leather taken from a Tyver beast she’d slain when she joined the Malikinar, and her alabaster skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. The close canopy of trees sealed out the sun but did nothing to temper the heat, and Kasira felt the same dampness on her brow.

She loathed the humid weather, loathed the scrape of her black fighting leathers against her clammy skin, and the weight of the sword across her back. Each one was a reminder that her life was no longer her own, and she carried them like stones through a river, waiting for the day they dragged her under.

Revna lifted her chin. “They’re going to think you’re a coward. They don’t need another reason to hate you, Kas.”

“I kill more beasts than any of them.”

“That’s not the problem.” Revna eyed her sidelong, a sign she was about to say something sensitive. “You never take a drenga, and you don’t celebrate your kills. It doesn’t matter how many you slay when half the unit’s convinced you’re a beast sympathizer.”

Kasira didn’t respond to the unasked question buried in her friend’s words: Are you? She killed because it was her job. Because if she didn’t, she would be sent back to Belvar, back to darkness so thick it suffocated, to a four-by-four cell she could barely stand up in, and the scritch, scritch, scritch of distant claws.

“Kas? Kas!”

Kasira stared down at the hand on her arm, coming back to herself in pieces. The concern on Revna’s face only sickened her. She jerked her arm free. “I’m fine.”

Revna’s verdant gaze betrayed her doubt. “I’m worried about you.”

Kasira withheld a derisive snort. What Revna really meant was that she was worried about Kasira’s soul. But what use was a soul if it could not be sold for a hot meal, nor burned on a cold night to stave off winter’s chill?

She could only afford to worry about one life at a time.

“I’m fine,” she said again. It was the simplest and yet most necessary lie she ever told. In the cold and quiet of her cell, those two words had kept her alive.

Revna didn’t get the chance to argue as a scream tore through the trees, followed by the resonating roar of an Alkatir.

“You’re welcome,” Kasira said simply, then dove into the woods.

They found their unit under siege in a nearby glade. The Alkatir had doubled back behind the Malik, and though small in number, the beasts more than made up for it in size and ferocity. With feline bodies, hawkish heads, and wings powerful enough to carry twice their weight, the Alkatir had only to throw their bodies into the Malik to crush bone, or else rend them with wicked claws.

Anyone else would have collapsed beneath the onslaught already, but the Malik were not ordinary soldiers. Their rigorous training and constant battles honed them to perfection, into legends the other nations feared, until even Kasira had begun to wonder if they were truly blessed with a piece of Haidra’s light.

Drawing her blade, Kasira fell in alongside Revna at the Alkatirs’ flank, cutting and hacking at white-furred limbs. The Alkatir fell with pained bellows, and she silenced them with strikes to their throats, ensuring a swift death. Their attack from the rear split the pride in two, and the unit surrounded the beasts, cutting off their escape.

Kasira turned from felling one to find an injured female hunched low to the ground. The Alkatir swiped at her with claws coated in gore. Kasira dodged, bringing her blade down along its flank. It was a poor swing, barely grazing flesh. The beast could have easily escaped, but it stayed where it was, snarling. Her next strike didn’t miss.

As the Alkatir’s body crumpled to the dirt, she realized why it hadn’t moved. A downy cub cowered behind its mother’s corpse, one golden eye slashed to a bloody pulp. Kasira’s sword came forward on instinct, but she stopped with the blade raised, unable to look away from the terrified cub.

She ought to kill it. The position of Malik was sacred. As Haidra’s chosen, only they could touch a beast without corrupting their souls. Only they were blessed to kill, and Kasira had tempted the goddess’s ire enough for one lifetime. Yet she didn’t move. Like an ember coaxed back to life, some long-smothered part of herself stayed Kasira’s hand, and she only watched as the cub darted into the safety of the woods.

Only then did she notice the silence of the battlefield. The last of the Alkatir were dead or had escaped, and the few injured Malik were being tended by the second unit’s medics.

Everyone else’s eyes were on her.

“I saw that, criminal.” Commander Dessen’s voice slithered into her ear. “You let it go.”

She turned a fraction, taking in the Commander’s roving eyes and the grip of his thin fingers on the coiled whip at his side. Even surrounded by a unit of fully trained Malik, he looked a step away from pissing himself at being this deep in the woods. How a man like him had risen through the ranks she didn’t know, but power rarely went to those who deserved it.

“She wasn’t here when they attacked, Commander,” said Jevin, a thin-faced man with the bearing of a rat. “She probably drew them here herself. The Kott can’t be trusted.”

“Beast sympathizer,” murmured someone at her back.

Revna started to intervene, but Kasira warned her off with a look. This was not the sort of thing her friend could fix with a brash word and a strong fist.

“Well?” Commander Dessen knew full well she couldn’t provide a suitable explanation. Though he had only been assigned to the Fifth Battalion two months prior, his eyes had followed her from the start. As a convicted criminal in the work-release program, being in Dessen’s good graces was the only thing keeping her out of a windowless cell, and he enjoyed exercising that power.

She would have to do something about him soon.

Commander Dessen’s voice rose to address the others. “The entire unit will take the Kott’s cleanup responsibilities for today’s kill as reward for the criminal’s mercy.”

A vicious murmur circled through the clearing, and the back of Kasira’s neck prickled with the press of angry eyes. She knew what Dessen was doing: letting her escape punishment, disbursing the consequences across the unit. He wanted to isolate her, to leave her with no one to turn to but him.

There was a time when Kasira would have relished that challenge, when she would have discerned all of Commander Dessen’s strings and delighted in learning to play them. Now, her mind ran through cons like a wounded beast fleeing her sword—it just hadn’t realized it was dead yet.

The unit split into groups, some to guard the perimeter, others to haul the Alkatir corpses into a pile. The beasts would be burned with the morning sun, the sins that led to their births disintegrating into ash by the grace of Haidra’s light, and tomorrow the unit would seek its next kill. One by one, until every beast, every sin, had been eliminated in the goddess’s name.

Kasira made for the nearest corpse—the young mother she had killed—and dragged its body to the pile. She gave the beast a final shove, and it collapsed upon its fellows, one golden eye staring up at her. Alive, the Alkatir were elegant, powerful creatures. In death, they looked impossibly fragile, gleaming with silver blood.

She worked in silence, refusing to let Revna catch her eye. It wasn’t long before the air grew thick with the scent of rot, the gathering evening breeze doing little to allay the damaging autumn sun. The scent clogged her throat and nose, her muscles aching down to the bone. Others were already searching the corpses for drenga. Curved three-inch claws, silver feathers, snow-white fur—whatever part of the beasts they desired to tie to their leathers as a token of their kill.

Kasira took nothing.

The sun hung low on the horizon by the time the last of the bodies had been dragged to the pile. They returned to camp, where the air buzzed with preparations for the Paratal’s arrival the following morning. Tents had been straightened, fighting leathers cleaned, vylor blades polished until they sang. The patrols along the Isherwood had been doubled, straining their already-thin battalion. But as head of the Haidrin Church, the Paratal’s life was second in importance only to the King’s, and no expense would be spared for his protection.

“Revna, my love, where have you been?” Paskar’s smoky voice barely preceded his long brown arm draping across Revna’s shoulders. He pulled away quickly with a sound of disgust. “What is that stench?”

“I believe they call it ‘defeat.’” Revna brushed a stray white feather free of her stained leathers. “It matches my new look.”

Paskar made a considering sound. “In truth, I would call it an improvement.”

Revna quipped something back at him, and they descended into a series of insults and elbows in ribs. Before long, Revna had Paskar in a headlock and was forcing him to recant every word he’d said. By the time they extricated themselves from each other, their group had reached the central square, where soldiers had gathered to eat around a roaring bonfire.

Kasira wanted nothing more than to wash the gore from beneath her nails and polish her sword in the silence of her tent, but their task had taken them past the start of dinner, and if she didn’t get hers now, none would remain. They joined the mess line, Revna recounting her kills for Paskar, who was of the second unit and therefore didn’t fight. Consisting mostly of medics, scribes, and cartographers, the second unit spent the majority of its time tending to the camp’s more skilled needs, and Paskar was their best medic.

The cook slopped a stew of barley and roughly cut root vegetables onto Kasira’s plate, half the portion he’d given the others. The man met her gaze, daring her to say something, but she only picked up a mug of thin ale and moved along.

“Are you joining us tonight, Kas?” Paskar asked once they were clear of the line. He had the sort of face that folded easily into a smile, one she had no doubt usually got him his way. It was the kind of smile she would have tried and adopted for herself once, before filing it away with all the others until she had need of it.

Revna hooked their arms together and said, “Of course she is.”

Kasira didn’t bother telling her this was a bad idea—she already knew. The people around the bonfire were first unit soldiers, their heads bent in prayer over their food. Revna was Unit One, a Malik proper, but Kasira was technically Unit Three, or the Kott, as the others called them in the northern Kalish tongue. The Nothing, for that was all criminals were in the eyes of the goddess.

Most people in Unit Three were closely watched and relegated to tasks they couldn’t ruin—little more than servants—but Kasira had proven herself a useful enough soldier to be loaned to the thin first unit, though the others never wasted an opportunity to remind her she wasn’t one of them.

When Revna shouldered Jevin and another Malik aside to make room for them on the logs, they obliged, but grudgingly. Jevin gave Kasira a look so foul it could have turned milk, clasping at the rosary beads around his wrist as if they might protect him from her corruption. Revna’s smile dared him to say something, but he only turned away.

As much as Kasira had tried to keep to herself after joining the Malikinar, Revna had sought her out like an invasive vine, ensnaring her into friendship. And though Kasira would never admit it, their connection kept her afloat. Against every better judgement, she had still sought herself an anchor. A touchpoint around which to build her lie, just like Loraya had taught her.

Except this time, she had no mark, no plan, no con. This time, the trick was to survive.

Just as they sat down, the ground jarred, sending a shudder through the camp. Trees groaned and quivered, several poorly set tents collapsing inward. Kasira braced herself, but the quake subsided as quickly as it came.

Paskar flicked spilled ale from his fingers. “Those are getting more frequent.”

“It’s the goddess showing her displeasure,” seethed Jevin in a low voice. “For the beast that … got away.”

Kasira’s fingers tightened around her cup. People like Jevin couldn’t trip in Kalthos without blaming beasts. Perhaps that was the trick of it, though. The con. They needed to hold something accountable for their suffering, and the Haidrin Church had provided the perfect scapegoat. And when the crown embraced the goddess a hundred years ago, the people went from blaming their leaders for every misfortune to killing beasts, all too willing to swallow whatever they were fed to numb the pain.

Or perhaps it’s all true, Kasira thought, studying a gnarled scar along her palm. Perhaps her childhood wonder for beasts, her curiosity, had corrupted her. One touch, and the sin had slid beneath her skin, the evil festering in her heart. That was what the priests had told her when they tried to burn the sin from her flesh. That if she did not repent, her soul would be left in the cold and silence of purgatory upon Haidra’s return, condemned forever to darkness.

It was the remnants of that curiosity that had stayed her hand against the Alkatir cub, a mistake she was certain she hadn’t yet finished paying for.

Paskar glanced nervously between Jevin and Revna, who looked one wrong word away from skewering Jevin with her fork. She was as devout a believer as any Kal, but twice as fierce a friend and far more than Kasira deserved.

Clearly seeking to change the topic, Paskar blurted, “Did you hear the Librarian has finally called for a new Assistant?” His long legs were stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his body tilted so his shoulder tipped into Revna’s. “I had started to doubt he would ever do it.”

For an instant, the tension between Jevin and Revna remained—and then her friend sniffed and tore into a hunk of bread, speaking over it. “I pity the damned fool who’s chosen.”

“I don’t know,” Paskar said with a wicked grin. “I’ve heard the current Librarian is something of a fox.”

“An attractive devil is still a devil, Paskar,” Revna returned. “And the Librarian is the worst kind. Right, Kas?”

“Yes,” she said automatically, as she had long ago learned to. To say anything else was blasphemy. As the arbitrator of international politics across the six nations and the sole overseer for the management of magic, Amorlin harbored the very beasts the Malikinar hunted, putting their study and protection ahead of all else. In contrast, Kalthos chose the sword. It was a difference of opinion that had pitted the kingdom against the Library for decades.

To Kalthos, the Library was a cesspool of sin, the Librarian its dark conductor.

“Perhaps that’s why the Paratal is visiting tomorrow,” Paskar teased with a waggle of his thick brows. “He’s going to choose one of us.” His joke was met with various forms of blanching and several dirty looks, but he only laughed.

“They ought to send one of you.” Jevin spat on the earth at Kasira’s feet. “Your soul is already damned, Kott.”

He barely had the words out before a flood of ale struck him in the face, followed by Revna’s tin cup. “Keep it up, and my blade is next.”

“Drawing your blade on a fellow Malik is—” Jevin stopped when Revna unsheathed her sword halfway with a smile that promised a complete disregard for whatever rule he was about to cite.

“You shouldn’t speak of the Librarian in such a way,” interjected one of the Malik who had been praying earlier, his eyes bright with fervor. “Haidra strives to purify all souls of the beasts’ corruption, and that includes the Librarian and his mages. If we do not look to save the most afflicted among us, are we truly doing Haidra’s work?”

“We should purge them from this earth the same way we do beasts,” Revna replied. Several other Malik grumbled their approval, and no one pushed the matter. The conversation deviated to the Paratal’s ongoing circuit of Malikinar battalions and speculation around the recent string of thefts about camp, but Kasira’s mind remained on the Library and the stories her mother used to tell her of it.

She remembered little of her childhood before the fire that claimed her parents’ lives. She could not recall her mother’s face, only the black hair that had fallen to her hips like a spool of silk. But she remembered when her mother had shown her the creature living in the creek by their home. She remembered her placing the Talowell’s scaly body in Kasira’s hands and the way her soft voice had whispered, “See? It is not so scary.”

Her mother had taught her to look at beasts and feel wonder in place of fear, had made a young Kasira dream of becoming the first Kalish mage in a century.

How foolish she had been.

“I’m telling you, we have a thief.” Revna’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “The vylor knife my father gifted me when I joined up is gone, and Kasira’s lost her silver hairpin.”

Paskar looked doubtful. “No Malik would resort to petty theft. Well, except—” His gaze flicked to Kasira, and Revna swatted his arm hard enough to make him wince.

He didn’t mean her. Her unit might not be familiar with her exact crimes, but they knew she had worked for Thane Ryarch, and there had been nothing petty about him. But Unit Three was made up of plenty of small-time thieves who could be responsible. Still, it was as good an opportunity as any to excuse herself.

“Kas—” Revna began.

“It’s fine,” she said, standing. “I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning.” Paskar offered an apologetic look, but Kasira only handed him the rest of her ale and left.

Thankful to be alone at last, she washed and dressed in a fresh tunic and pants, cleaning her leathers before she returned to the tent she shared with Revna. After polishing her sword, she climbed into her bedroll and lay staring at the ceiling, toying with the gold rosary beads she had slipped off Jevin’s wrist.

People thought of cons as long, elaborate schemes, full of detailed steps and daring moves, but a con could be as simple as telling a good lie or framing a scene in order to craft the story you wanted. It could even be as straightforward as seizing an opportunity of distraction—say, a mug of ale flying at someone’s face—in which to act.

There were some things she could not stop herself from doing, even in her near-catatonic state. Her heart kept beating, her lungs kept breathing, and her mind kept running through cons. Tomorrow she would wake and face another hunt. Her sword would carve new flesh, and she would wash the creature’s blood from her hands and return to a camp full of people who did not trust her and whose cause she did not believe in. Again and again, day after day.

Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.

It had become the rhythm of her life, and she had fallen into it with the tenacity of a mule, drawn along by its beat to place one foot in front of the other. It got her through the day, then the week, and soon another year would pass. Another year still alive.

Another year closer to freedom.

It was a poor attempt at fulfilling the promise she and Loraya had made to each other, but Kasira would not have survived twenty years in prison, and that was exactly where she would be without the Malikinar. She had no choice, no life, nothing but that rhythm. She fell asleep to it.

Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.

Survive.



KASIRA WOKE WITH A SCREAM ON HER LIPS.

It was several moments before her mind caught up to her eyes, and in those protracted seconds between nightmare and wakefulness, she was back in her cell in Belvar, the walls too close, the stale air too thin. Then her vision resolved into the sloping outline of Revna’s slumbering form, the deep rumble of her snore filling the tent.

It wasn’t the first time her dreams had woken her. She hadn’t slept through the night since before Belvar, when the woman beside her had been a thief so clever Kasira had spent her teenage years desperately chasing her skill. Back then, it was so easy to believe that nothing would ever change. Now she knew that worlds could collapse on the turn of a wind.

With her heart beating painfully against the cage of her chest, Kasira rolled out of her bedroll and donned her boots, slipping silently out into the light of a harvest moon. A slurring voice emanated from a nearby tent, fighting its way through the garbled final refrains of “In the King’s name, the beasts we will slay.” The camp was quiet otherwise, the last revelers from the night’s victory celebration drunk on watered-down ale and passed out on their bedrolls.

Anywhere else in Kalthos, such debauchery would have been condemned, but not among Haidra’s chosen. Born from a group of Haidrin priests when the religion flowed south, the Malikinar’s ranks had swelled over the past several decades, now firmly rooted beneath the crown’s military despite their church ties. Kasira was convinced half the Malik only joined up for the lax restrictions, tired of being told they couldn’t drink or swear or fight lest they tarnish their souls.

She started walking, but it wasn’t long before her breath began to quicken with nerves, and she slid into the Isherwood. Sometimes, the openness of the sky made her feel as though she were drowning. She had spent so many years locked inside a cell that cramped spaces made her nervous, but even worse were the ones that felt as endless in their vastness as the sea.

This isn’t real. She summoned the familiar refrain as she walked. This is only temporary.

She made it all of thirty yards before she reached the bodies, still stacked in a pile and waiting for the Paratal to set them alight in tomorrow’s Burning. The Alkatirs’ white-furred limbs lay bent at awkward angles, feathered wings snapped like paper kites. She covered her nose against the stench, unable to look away from the open, staring eyes of the dead beasts.

The orphanage’s priests had drilled into her that beasts were the manifestation of human sin. That when one trespassed against Kalish law, when they lied or cheated or stole, their sin led to the birth of another beast. The only way to purify one’s soul was through dedication to Haidra, or by killing beasts as part of the Malikinar. Only then, once the world had been purified of sin, would their goddess return to them in the flesh for the Final Forgiveness.

Never mind that the Library’s international laws permitted killing beasts only in defense of human life. If anyone asked, the Kalish government would spin some story about how the pride had attacked a town, and there had been no time to call for help, but everyone would know it for the cleansing that it was.

Looking at the corpses before her, graceful even in death, Kasira felt anything but clean.

Something rustled in the brush, and Kasira stilled. A creature barely smaller than her slunk from the trees, the moonlight catching on a sleek white body and a single golden eye, the other a ravaged mess.

The Alkatir cub.

The beast sniffed the pile of corpses, making a pained keening sound.

“Hush,” Kasira hissed. “They’ll hear you.”

The cub turned on her, snarling and trying to lift its wings to look bigger, but one remained limp at its side.

Kasira stepped toward it, arms spread wide. “Go!” She clapped once, hard, and the cub scurried back into the forest.

“Kasira?” called a slurring voice.

A broad-shouldered form detached itself from the shadows. Commander Dessen’s usually stiff gait was loose from the mylak he indulged in too freely. One of the few magical artifacts that the Library deemed safe not to confiscate, the enchanted wine tasted different to anyone who drank it. She suspected Dessen would say his tasted of beast blood and good Kalish steel, his possession of the wine a secret as open as the grave behind her, as he often shared it with Malik he favored.

Commander Dessen leered down at her with dark eyes, one hand caressing the whip at his side. “I thought I saw you go this way. Inspecting your handiwork?”

“It was a good kill, Commander.” She immediately stood taller beneath his attention. Feet together, shoulders back—a good soldier, just like he expected to see. He needn’t know that he repulsed her nearly as much as the pile of carcasses.

“Come now, Kasira, I’ve told you before. It’s Harker when we’re alone.”

They weren’t alone. Jevin and another Malik stood at the tree line at his back, but their eyes were set on the woods beyond in a clear message: We see nothing.

Dessen swayed where he stood, but his eyes were steady on her, pupils blown wide and black. His hand tightened on his whip. “That said, no matter your reason for coming here, you are still breaking curfew. That’s two infractions in one day, criminal.”

Kasira was painfully aware of her lack of weaponry. She had a single knife, her sword left behind in her tent, though this was not the sort of problem steel could solve. Next, Dessen would illustrate how delicate her situation was before pressing what he really came for—her.

“Come here.” He crooked a finger. She didn’t move. His face darkened. “I don’t care how many beasts you slay. You remain here by my good graces alone, and I can just as easily return you to where you came from.” To Belvar, to her jail cell. To the four-by-four room of stone walls with no window, no light, no air.

“You’re making a mistake,” she warned. Her voice was calm, but her mind ticked through possibilities. Dessen was too drunk to be dissuaded with logic and just conceited enough to go through with this. She had been preparing for this moment ever since he’d arrived, his attention too quick to settle on her, but her contingency plan wasn’t ready yet.

Dessen emitted a low sound of frustration. “The mistake is yours. You are disobeying a direct order from your commanding officer.”

For most, that meant ten lashes, atop the ten for breaking curfew. For her, it would mean returning to Belvar. But obeying meant losing what little strength she had left.

Some part of her had wanted this confrontation. To be backed into a corner so tight she had no choice but to fight her way out. It was the same part that knew what she had been doing the past four years was a poor imitation of living, that even if she made it to the end of her ten-year service, there would be nothing left of her.

That was Dessen’s true mistake: He didn’t know what she was willing to do to survive.

Satisfaction bloomed across his face when she strode toward him. He expected her to bend to his will, to yield to the power he held over her.

He did not expect her to drive a knife into his leg.

His scream tore through the clearing, and she jerked the blade free, swinging for his neck. Some semblance of Malik training must have kicked in because he seized her by the elbow and wrenched her arm, forcing her to drop the knife.

She caught it with her other hand and drove it back into the same leg.

His guards reached them then, dragging her away as Commander Dessen clutched his thigh. His leathers would have taken the brunt of the damage, but he didn’t seem like the type who handled pain well. He didn’t hold it close, a familiar companion.

“On her knees!” Dessen shrieked.

“Sir, your leg—” began Jevin.

“Now!”

They forced Kasira to her knees with her back to Dessen, Jevin hissing in her ear, “About time someone put you back in your place, Kott.”

She only stared into the trees.

Con artists had many skills, from a knack for reading people to a talent for remembering details, but Kasira had never excelled at anything more than lying. To her marks, to her friends, even to herself—she crafted fallacies so intricate she sometimes lost herself in them, but she never let anyone see the truth.

Guard your heart, Loraya’s voice whispered, e