Backstory trope: Orphaned Lead
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Kessa is a half-barbarian herb-witch, arrested for crimes she didn’t quite intend. But when Iathor discovers her immunity to truth potions, he’ll do whatever he must to court her. Guilty or not, she’s his only hope of banishing his nightmare: a son enslaved to him by the loyalty potion that each Lord Alchemist’s heir must drink, and defeat. But Kessa doesn’t trust him, Iasen despises her tainted blood, and there’s still the mystery of who complicated Kessa’s little crime into the bigger one she didn’t intend. They don’t even have the benefit of lust at first sight. All they have in common is the alchemist’s immunity, and an ability to get on each other’s nerves. Will it be enough?
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The daughter of a Warrior King, Lara was trained as a healer. With her father dead and her incompetent half-brother on the throne, the kingdom is in danger of falling to warring Firelanders. Unable to depose her sibling or negotiate peace, Lara serves her people by healing the warriors—on both sides of the conflict—who are injured in battle. Lara finds herself educated in her enemy’s language and customs in return for her attention and compassion. She never expects that her deeds, done in good faith, would lead to the handsome and mysterious Firelander Warlord demanding her in exchange for a cease-fire. To save her land and her people, Lara trades her freedom to become the Warprize.
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Joined in a battle for survival, a broken-winged angel and a shapeshifter huntress with a bloody past form a bond that may change their world. Alone since her father’s murder, Aurora has spent years hunting his killers. Battle-weary she’s ready to start over where no one knows who or what she is – she just has one last mission. Everything is going to plan until she discovers the beautiful winged girl caged underground. Her decision to rescue Evie and to help her get home safely, despite avians being infamous for selling out shifters like Aurora to cutters and black-market flesh dealers, will put her on a perilous path.
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Brexley is thrown into the most feared prison in the east. Halalhaz, the House of Death—where you go in but don’t come out. She must learn to live with the worst of fae and human criminals. Here she meets the sexy, vicious legend, Warwick Farkas. A myth among man and fae. Brexley can’t deny an intense draw to him, one that might cost her life. If The Games don’t take her out first—A fight to the death where only one survives.
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He is temptation, but she will not be tempted. As a child, Selene was left at the foot of the White Tower—given to the sorceresses who train those with magic. Her life has been spent honing her powers. But she can’t fully join their ranks until she fulfills a single, impossible task. Bring the Demon King, Lust, to his knees.
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Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.
She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.
She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.
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Choose: a quick death… or slow poison…
As the food taster, Yelena will eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace — and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia. To make matters worse, the chief of security deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust, and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
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Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
