Dawn of Magic [A Character-Driven Dark Epic Fantasy]

Magic was real. But what about dragons? To twelve-year-old Nash, the answer was obvious: they were real too. His village, however, stood between him and the world beyond it like a cage. His mother forbade him from leaving, hid the truth about his father, and forced him to conceal his half-crimson eye. So Nash wished for his cage to break. It did. A dragon descended from the sky. It burned his village, killed his mother, and left him standing alone before the ashes of everything that had once protected him. But the dragon had not come for the village. It had come for him. Rescued by Kane, the mysterious King of Valenharth, Nash finds refuge in the royal palace—and a protector willing to defy the empire hunting him. There, he must learn to live beside Alvis, the king’s sheltered son. Neither wants a brother. Yet as their rivalry gives way to trust, Nash begins to find something he thought he had lost forever: a family. But as Nash begins to rebuild his life, the king’s past threatens to tear it apart. Enemies are moving against his throne, calling him a usurper. Behind their hatred lies a truth Kane has carried for twenty-four years. To give Nash and Alvis a future, Kane must confront the past that made him king—before its hatred becomes their inheritance.