Gates of Thiros (The War of Nine Kings #1)

No one is born with magic. Only in the hour of breaking is it found—
and Waenia Wyvarian is about to shatter.

Waenia wears a borrowed name, crowned in borrowed blood, raised to serve a kingdom that fears her. She wears many faces to hide the one they dread—the one that surfaced once, before the court, when the power she didn’t understand came alive.

“She’d twisted herself into something they could use—then praised her for it. She’d even borrowed Nimara’s poise, her courtly grace, her effortless charm. Flirtation had become survival. A distraction. Hearts bruised, whispers spread. Let them talk. Better they saw a girl with a bleeding heart than something worse. Something unnameable. A queen couldn’t be a god. Couldn’t be a beast. She had to be human.”

But masks crack, and power never stays buried. When forbidden magic awakens in her hands, Waenia becomes Thiros’s greatest weapon… and its greatest threat.

To end a rising war against Luvian Veskar, the warlord who calls himself a God-King, her father binds her to an enemy prince—hoping to secure peace and unite their forces against the armies gathering in the west. But Waenia’s heart already belongs to the prince’s commander, Darrion Rhoane—a man bound by duty, haunted by loyalty, and carrying secrets that could unmake them both.

“He is the blade sworn to ruin her. She is the fire fated to burn him.”

Yet love and loyalty mean little when gods begin to die, and the Gate of Light—once the world’s salvation—has been corrupted by shadows that feed on the remnants of creation.

When Waenia uncovers the truth behind the name she bears—the lies she was raised on, and the secrets that could shatter her—she must decide how to go on. Torn between duty and defiance, she must choose whether to save the world that broke her… or remake it.

“You want truth to be simple. It isn’t. You are both—broken and whole. That is the burden of being human.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“To face yourself. Not to be perfect, but to understand. Life isn’t blessing or curse. It’s a question. Every day, you choose—will you answer it, or run?”

Left alone on the throne, as her father and Darrion wage war on two fronts, Waenia sees the greater threat rising in the north. When Luvian’s deception is revealed, she journeys north to rally the warring tribes—fractured by betrayal, bound by old hate—to fight beneath one banner. But the path is perilous. Captivity, pain, and loss become her teachers. Every scar draws her closer to the truth she’s long feared: to heal the world, she must lay down her sword—and face the power that once terrified her.

Torn between love and faith, destiny and defiance, Waenia must decide how to stand when she comes face to face with the man who calls himself God-King.
Will she raise her blade… or let the light choose her?