Tariel wanted nothing beyond his books, his spells, and the safety of Caelendor.
The Five Kingdoms recruit him anyway, sending a man who has never left home to kill a dragon feared for millennia.
That charge is close to a death sentence, and the creature is no vanished legend; it still lives.
He must travel with Cassian, a stubborn mercenary who will not speak of his past, through betrayal, ancient magic, and politics that leave little room for a quiet scholar.
What begins as an unwanted partnership edges into a slow-burn romance between the two men, while the fate pressed onto Tariel remains a burden he never sought.
