The Crucible

Mora Dray was supposed to survive the Crucible by staying invisible.

Dragged from the streets into an academy built to turn Aethyr-touched children into weapons, Mora knows the rules: endure, obey, kill. Hide what she is. Trust no one. The Crucible is not a school so much as a machine, grinding frightened children into soldiers for an empire that calls cruelty order and obedience mercy.

Mora has survived hunger, grief, and the kind of secrets that can get a girl killed. She knows how to disappear into a crowd, how to take a hit, how to smile with blood in her mouth and defiance in her eyes. But the Crucible is designed to strip every weakness bare, and Mora's greatest weakness may be the one thing she cannot seem to kill in herself: the instinct to care.

Then there's Liora Skaggs.

A lethal Fourth-Year with violet eyes, a dangerous smile, and secrets sharp enough to cut, Skaggs should be another threat in a place built from them. She is already forged by the system Mora hates, already trusted by the people who would execute Mora if they knew what she really was.

Instead, Skaggs lies to save her life.

Now Mora is caught between survival and fascination, between the truths she has buried and the girl who sees far too much. Skaggs wants too much. Knows too much. And every time Mora tells herself to stay away, the Crucible gives her another reason to get closer.

But Mora's secret is bigger than one academy, one empire, or one dangerous girl with blood on her mouth and a smile like a dare.

If it comes to light, Mora won't be the only one who burns.

Perfect for fans of brutal academy romantasy, sapphic enemies-to-lovers tension, dangerous women, forbidden attraction, lethal training grounds, and heroines sharp enough to survive the places meant to break them.