Giftless

Emilie should be thrilled when her blackout headaches are diagnosed as the Gift. After all, the Gift is the Mother’s essence, a magic everyone born upon the soils of the Federated Kingdoms has. But Emilie’s not from the Federated Kingdoms. She’s also twenty-three, a decade older than anyone could survive without the ritual to transfer the Gift from the body into a gem. The diagnosis is impossible, and she’d be damned to admit the thing she fears most—wielded by the same people who have beaten, enslaved, and murdered the Giftless like her—is actually as much a part of herself as her own soul. Deny it all she likes, if she doesn’t undergo the ritual, her developing Gift will kill her.

But when Emilie finally resigns herself to the ritual, her Gift refuses to leave her body. It seems not only do the Gifted want her dead, but her own Gift has taken their side.

Growing sicker each day, Emilie accepts the help of her Gifted and naively privileged friend, Eric, and sets out to find something, anything, to keep her from dying. But when Emilie kills a bountyman, her Gift awakens with uncontrollable power, slaughtering those near her and summoning a silent man made of mist who awaits her command. Soon, the cure she seeks becomes leverage in the hands of the Federated Kingdoms who would force her to use her Gift in their war against the Giftless Marion Empire. If Emilie is to save herself, she must find a way to use her deadly Gift on her own terms and unlock the dark secret of how she became Gifted in the first place—a truth so devastating, it will rewrite the history of two nations and shatter everything Emilie believed about herself.