Tag: Young Adult

Death wasn’t the ending. It was the catalyst.
Cassius d’Etrius was all too familiar with suffering. After losing his family, his best friend, and his only love, he’d had his fill of it. His sole focus was protecting what remained, no matter the cost, and there was no limit to what he was willing to sacrifice to that end.
Even if it meant partnering with a traitor.
Six years of brutal training molded him into the model Volandrian nobleman, fit to hold the title of the Duke of Etrius. Cold and calculating, with instincts that made him a threat to anyone unlucky enough to cross his path, it came as no surprise when he seized control of the Southern Command after only three years under the tutelage of Marquis Genji Kitamura, a move that cemented his position in high society.
But when a mysterious woman crosses his path, Cassius can’t help but be drawn into her orbit. The decision to follow her leads to answers he never imagined and more questions than he thought existed. In a dizzying whirlwind of events that push his loyalties to the breaking point, Cassius must decide who to trust.
Or who to kill.

No expectations—no chance for disappointment.
Akina de Kitamura had long given up hope that Volandrian nobility would come to accept her and her identical twin sister, Miki. Four years at the Academy, Volandria’s most prestigious military school, hadn’t changed her opinion. They were bastard children, the product of a Volandrian nobleman’s tryst with a Solterrean commoner. Even the favor of famed commander Marquis Genji de Kitamura, their uncle, couldn’t spare them from scorn. Her engagement to her childhood friend Cassius d’Etrius’s older brother compounded the sentiment when the former heir to the duchy fled in the dead of night after murdering his family.
She hated that her sister and her friend saw the exposition at the end of graduation as their chance to force the haughty nobles to acknowledge them. The event brought the best and the brightest from military schools across the Four Kingdoms. It also brought along increased pressure to perform. All eyes would be on the Academy graduates to deliver as this year’s hosts, and Cassius and Miki had no intention of letting the opportunity slip by for any of them, even if it meant dragging Akina along with them.
However, when an unexpected intruder brings about shocking revelations concerning the past, the trio realizes nothing ever goes quite as planned. With their wits and training to guide them, they race to adjust to the changing landscape and protect one another from harm.