Aethyr 1 - The Crucible

The Crucible: the Empire's brutal war academy, where the Aethyr-touched are forged into weapons and attachment is a crime. Aethyrim like Mora Dray don't enroll. They're delivered. Property of the Empire. Trained to kill. Culled when they break. Mora walks through the gates with quick knives, a closed mouth, and a secret that will hang her if anyone looks too closely. So the plan is the one that's kept her breathing this long: be nobody. Head down, scores middling, name off every list. She has invisible down to an art. Nobody warned her about Liora Skaggs. Violet-haired, knife-scarred, a Fourth-Year with a smile like a drawn blade... and the most dangerous woman in the Crucible. Everything about her should read as a threat. Instead, she looks across a crowded training yard and sees Mora for who she is. Not the quiet candidate. Not the middling scores. Her. And being seen by Skaggs doesn't feel like a death sentence. It feels like the first time anyone's ever said her name. What Skaggs offers isn't kindness. It's a blade flipped into the dirt at Mora's feet and an order to fight. After that, every rule bends. Keep quiet becomes stand out. Stay hidden becomes midnight matches in borrowed leather. And Stay alive? Stay alive goes out the window somewhere around the first sparring session that ends dangerously close to desire. But they're both property, and property isn't supposed to want things. Wanting Skaggs is the first thing Mora has ever done just for herself, and she is stupid with it, reckless with it, starving with it. Beyond the walls, the war she was built for is creeping closer, dragonfire is no longer rumor, and the Empire's version of the truth is fraying at the edges. Her secret could get her killed. Skaggs almost certainly will. And still... Mora can't get…