Ashes and Aethoria

The world remembers the Draconian as monsters. It remembers the burned villages, the broken treaties, the war that lasted six years and ended with the destruction of Solari, the ancient kingdom that once stood among the oldest powers of the world. The world remembers a lie, Ryska Aen knows because she watched the truth die, she watched her homeland burn, watched the people she loved stay behind so she could escape and watched an entire civilization reduced to ash while the victors wrote themselves into history as heroes. Alone and hunted, she crosses continents with nothing but a bow, a false identity, and the desperate hope of reaching Aethoria. For four centuries, Aethoria Central University has stood above kings, emperors, and wars. Protected by an ancient Charter, it offers sanctuary to any student capable of earning a place within its walls. To the rest of the world, it is the greatest academy ever built, to Ryska, it is survival but even within Aethoria's protection, the past refuses to let her go. Rumors follow her through the halls, students look at her and see the enemy they were raised to hate. Four boys disappear, and suspicion falls upon the only Draconian on campus. Far beyond the university, powerful eyes have already turned toward Aldaene, and among them is Princess Naerevyn of Vialthor. Brilliant, ambitious, and terrifyingly patient, Naerevyn understands that the survivor is a threat, a survivor remembers and if enough people begin asking the wrong questions about the war, the foundations of an empire may begin to crack. As political tensions tighten around the academy, Ryska finds unexpected allies among her fellow students. A cavalry rider who sees more than he says, a prince whose charm hides his own ambitions, and a generation destined to inherit a world built upon buried truths because the war that destroyed Solari is not over. It has merely changed shape and somewhere between the halls of Aethoria and the courts of emperors, a refugee carrying the memory of a dead kingdom may become the spark that sets the world on fire once again.