Chaos & Flame

From Darling Seabreak cannot remember anything before the murder of her family and the bloody fall of House Sphinx, but she does know she owes her life to House Kraken--most especially the adoptive father who liberated her from the sewers where she spent her childhood. So when her father is captured in battle, Darling proves willing to do anything to save him--even killing each and every last member of House Dragon. ; Talon Goldhoard has always been a dutiful Dragon and a brave warrior to boot, leading the elite troops o fhis brother, the High Prince Regent, in battle. But as a war general, Talon must split his time between the front lines and the home front, where his brother’s erratic rule threatens to undo a hundred years of House Dragon’s hard work. So when Talon encounters a ferocious girl who looks exactly like the one his brother has painted obsessively, repeatedly, for years, Talon knows he must capture her alive. ; Together, Darling and Talon must navigate the treacherous waters of House politics, caught up in the complicated game the High Prince Regent is playing. The unlikeliest of allies, they’ll have to put aside the blood-soaked history of their Houses, and learn to tolerate--even trust--one another in order to survive.

Autorentext

Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels and four anthology contributions, including Dread Nation and Deathless Divide. She is a former editor in chief of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award, and her work has been shortlisted numerous times for state and literary awards. She holds a BA in History from Georgia Southern University and an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University. Visit her at authorjustinaireland.com or follow her on Twitter @justinaireland.

Tessa Gratton is the author of adult and YA SFF novels and short stories that have been translated into twenty-two languages, long-listed for the Otherwise Award, and several have been Junior Library Guild Selections. Her most recent novels are the dark queer fairy tales Strange Grace and Night Shine, and the queer Shakespeare retelling Lady Hotspur. Her upcoming work includes the YA fantasy Chaos and Flame (2023), and novels of Star Wars: The High Republic. Though she has lived all over the world, she currently resides at the edge of the Kansas prairie with her wife. She/any.

Klappentext

From New York Times bestselling author Justina Ireland and Tessa Gratton comes the first book in a ferocious YA fantasy duology featuring ancient magic, warring factions, and a romance between the two people in the world with the most cause to hate one another.

Darling Seabreak cannot remember anything before the murder of her family at the hands of House Dragon, but she knows she owes her life to both the power of her Chaos Boon and House Kraken for liberating her from the sewers where she spent her childhood. So when her adoptive Kraken father is captured in battle, Darling vows to save him-even if that means killing each and every last member of House Dragon.

Talon Goldhoard has always been a dutiful War Prince for House Dragon, bravely leading the elite troops of his brother, the High Prince Regent. But lately his brother's erratic rule threatens to undo a hundred years of House Dragon's hard work, and factions are turning to Talon to unseat him. Talon resists, until he's ambushed by a fierce girl who looks exactly like the one his brother has painted obsessively, repeatedly, for years, and Talon knows she's the key to everything.

Together, Darling and Talon must navigate the treacherous waters of House politics, caught up in the complicated game the High Prince Regent is playing against everyone. The unlikeliest of allies, they'll have to stop fighting each other long enough to learn to fight together in order to survive the fiery prophecies and ancient blood magic threatening to devastate their entire world.

Zusammenfassung
From New York Times bestselling author Justina Ireland and Tessa Gratton comes the first book in a sprawling YA fantasy duology featuring ancient magic, warring factions, and a romance between the two people in the world with the most cause to hate one another.

Darling Seabreak cannot remember anything before the murder of her family and the bloody fall of House Sphinx, but she does know she owes her life to House Kraken—most especially the adoptive father who liberated her from the sewers where she spent her childhood. So when her father is captured in battle, Darling proves willing to do anything to save him—even killing each and every last member of House Dragon.

Talon Goldhoard has always been a dutiful Dragon and a brave warrior to boot, leading the elite troops o fhis brother, the High Prince Regent, in battle. But as a war general, Talon must split his time between the front lines and the home front, where his brother’s erratic rule threatens to undo a hundred years of House Dragon’s hard work. So when Talon encounters a ferocious girl who looks exactly like the one his brother has painted obsessively, repeatedly, for years, Talon knows he must capture her alive.

Together, Darling and Talon must navigate the treacherous waters of House politics, caught up in the complicated game the High Prince Regent is playing. The unlikeliest of allies, they’ll have to put aside the blood-soaked history of their Houses, and learn to tolerate—even trust—one another in order to survive.

Leseprobe
The first time the scion of House Dragon painted the eyeless girl, he was only six years old. She was nothing but a face shaped with finger smears of brown, a darker crooked line that might've been a sad smile, and huge, swirling black holes where her eyes should be.

"I don't know how to save her," he said to his mother when he presented the art to her.

His mother accepted the soft parchment, doing her best to hide the horror she felt at the red-rimmed, furious eyeholes in her son's painting. Casually, she asked, "Why is she in danger?"

"I don't know."

"What happened to her eyes?"

"Nothing yet." The little boy shrugged.

Though the Dragon consort asked a few more delicate questions, he could give her no answers. But he drew the eyeless girl again and again, and told his nurse about her, and his aunt, and his father eventually. That was a mistake, because he was far too old for imaginary friends, his father growled. The consort promised her husband, the Dragon regent, it was only childish play, and their son would grow out of it.

Better an imaginary friend, she thought, than the truth she suspected deep in her heart: her son had been gifted with a boon, but it was a prophetic one, and prophecy always, always drove the wielder mad.

The people of Pyrlanum would never accept a regent with such a wild boon, and to shield her eldest son, the consort extracted a promise from him to stop talking about the girl, and certainly to stop painting her. He must never paint anything from a dream or vision. It was dangerous. The young scion agreed, thrilled to have such an illicit thing binding him with his mother.

And he kept his promise for two entire years, until his mother was murdered.

The day she died, the consort and the scion were pruning in their private garden. She injured herself on a few reckless roses, and when she gasped, the scion saw a flash of vision, in strokes of vivid paint: a fan of dark blue skirts against the harsh black-and-white checkered floor of his mother's solar, golden sunlight smeared in streaks, and a kiss of crimson splattered at her mouth and in her hair. A spilled cup near her …