The Holy Bloodlines

Elyseans are so wise… Elyseans are so beautiful…. Elyseans are divine… Elyseans are power-hungry assholes with a god complex. Yes, I said it. Sue me and bring out your pitchforks. Unfortunately for me, the deadly Elysean Trials are right around the corner. Despite my unpopular opinion of them and anything Olympian-gods related, when they unleash their strange blue birds to select mortals around the country as candidates, one of them chooses me.

I never wanted to have anything to do with Elyseans, descendants of the Olympian gods. When I'm forced to participate in their deadly trials, I also learn that not everything is as it looks, and my past might just be very different from what I remember. So when I complete their trials, and they offer me an invitation to the Academy, I do the unthinkable and say yes. The plan is simple—find the man who did something outrageous to me when I was five years old, get out of the city of gods, and never look back. If only it were that simple.

The Elyseans have always thought themselves better than us mortals. At least, that's what they want the whole world to think. I believe it—until I complete the Elysean Trials they force me in and attend the Academy of Divine Light and Beauty. Until I meet a real Olympian goddess, and she finally sheds light on the gods' biggest secret, and it's worse than I could have ever imagined. Turns out, there's a purpose to the Elysean Trails. There's a reason why they exist and why they choose mortals to bring to their Academy. A very good reason, just not the one the world knows.

A year ago, I was dragged into what I thought was hell against my will—the Daedalus Palace in the Elysean city of Idaea. Turns out that was just a place, but there's an actual hell here, so now I'm going in there, too. This time, though? Death is pretty much guaranteed, and I'm going in willingly. But if I'm lucky and I somehow survive, I'll get to say that I spent my nineteenth birthday in the Underworld.