They made her a weapon and called it mercy. Raised as an assassin, promised to a prince she doesn’t love, Maren is sent to infiltrate the enemy’s dragon war-college and murder its cruel heir, the one blade her court cannot reach. Do it, and she buys the only thing she’s never been allowed to want: her freedom. But the monster she came to kill is the first person in either court to ask what she wants instead of what she’s for. And when a dragon that should never choose a human chooses her, in front of both courts at once, it shatters the lie the whole realm is built on, and marks her for death on every side. She was sent to kill him. She’s promised to his rival. And the only two souls alive who see her as more than a weapon are the cruel prince she came to murder and the dragon that was never supposed to choose her. One court made her a weapon. One will marry her to keep her. He’s the only one who ever asked what she wanted.