M.L. Spencer

As a young dragon living by the ideals of virtue and honor, Dauria wanted nothing more than to live in peace and harmony with humanity. When that failed, she helped establish a pact that forced Dragonkind into the shadows. When she awakens after millennia of slumber, she finds the Earth a very different place than she remembers. To make matters worse, upon exiting her lair she finds herself stripped of all her draconic power and left to freeze, in human form, on the icy heights of her mountain home. Someone doesn’t want her to rejoin the rest of her kind.

For an imperial assassin, assignment as a courtesan in the Floating World seems like a waste of her talents...until killers target her clan sisters. In the legendary Floating World, wars are waged with wit, the strongest soldier can be bound with threads of silk, and flesh is the currency by which life, death, and freedom can all be purchased. Half-elf Jie bemoans her temporary assignment as a Night Blossom in the most sought-after house, even if it's the perfect cover for her real work as an assassin in the emperor’s service.

Long ago, the world fell into twilight, when the great empires of old consumed each other in sorcerous cataclysms. In the south, the Star Towers fell, swallowed by the sea, while the black glaciers descended upon the northern holdfasts, entombing the cities of Min-Ceruth in ice and sorcery. Then from the ancient empire of Menekar, the paladins of Ama came, putting every surviving sorcerer to the sword and cleansing their taint from the land. The pulse of magic slowed, fading like the heartbeat of a dying man. But after a thousand years, it has begun to quicken again.