Aina's Breath

"She felt fear: that same, dark, shuddering fear that consumed her the night she birthed her daughter, the same, writhing panic when she looked into the dark, trusting eyes. She had wanted to drop the infant and run screaming. Unseen forces had stilled her arms. Choking back that fear had been the hardest thing, like greeting a murderer's swinging knife with a smile on your face." Enosh, apprentice to one of the richest merchants in the Kag, is secretly heir to a broken line of mages. Because of The Empire of Dageis' quest for sources of the agan - the life-source that mages use for power - his people have been reduced to scavengers, his culture diminished to a speck in the wind. For more than ten years, he has helped raise a conjured beast to use as a weapon against the Dageians. But Enosh's plans are falling apart. A powerful enemy has escaped and Enosh needs to capture him before he reaches Dageis. His quest is further complicated after he finds himself used as a pawn by Gasparian nobles. On the other end of the continent, Sume, daughter to a Jin-Sayeng hero, must return to her roots to save her country and bring honour to her father's name. To do this, she must befriend a prince and understand the terrible, corrupting nature of power and the reason her father was driven to walk away from it all those years ago... Meanwhile, Kefier, Enosh's agan-blind brother, is forced back into a life of violence. As he struggles with the notion that hands, once bloodied, never stay clean for long, he finds himself occupied with an unexpected burden: his own brother's daughter.


Genre: Fantasy