Val Saintcrowe

The Sword and the Sunrise Val Saintcrowe

She's not a virgin sacrifice. Every fall a girl is given to Sir Eithan Draig, who leads the Knights of Midian. He and his men keep the nightmares back. The knights prowl the dark forest, more monsters than men, swathed in darkness, their eyes like pale lanterns. The girl is called a bride, but whatever Eithan does with her, she doesn't survive to see the next dawn. So, truly, she's a sacrifice. This year, the bride is Nicce, but she's no helpless victim. She has been prepared for this moment, consecrated to the sun, trained to fight with magic and with weapons. The guild of assassins who taught her don't believe in the nightmares. The real menace is Eithan himself, they say, and Nicce must kill him. Two seconds inside the dark forest, it becomes viciously and horrifyingly clear the guild are wrong about the nightmares. They are real. And so now, Nicce waits for Eithan to claim her. If she kills him, who holds back the nightmares? That terror cannot be let free. Everything she was sure of is in shambles. She only knows one thing. No matter what, tomorrow, she will see the sunrise. Read this book if you like complicated characters who do the wrong things for the right reasons, high stakes, near impossible odds, and smoldering fuses of slow burn hate-to-love arcs.