cuendillar
Synopsis
Elinor Cartwright isn’t anyone special. She’s just pretty enough, smart enough, and friendly enough to be on the fringes of the “popular” circles that her twin brother Elliot moves through with ease, but she can’t help feeling like she doesn’t belong. She dreams of leaving their little mountain village, but knows that it isn’t likely she will.
All of that changes on her seventeenth birthday. The Order of Alerion, lead by a mysterious man called Brother Josiah, descend upon her little town and make a devastating choice. It’s an Atonement Year, when one girl from the Kingdom of Euphrata is adopted into the royal family before she is left at the Gates of Atonement as a human sacrifice for the ancient winged race of Alerion. One girl must be killed to keep humankind safe from their ancient masters.
Ellie is that girl.
Against her will, she is ripped from the only home she’s ever known and thrust into a dangerous new world filled with incredible beauty and unspeakable cruelty. For one year, she must live as a princess in a place where she can trust no one while she desperately tries to find her way home.
Meanwhile, a young Alerion rebel, Wesley, has been stripped of his wings and left Flightless. He disguises himself as an acolyte with one intention: to bring the down the Order from the inside and stop the corrupt Alerion Eldest from once again enslaving humankind. As tensions rise on the Council of Elders, one thing is clear: war is coming, and no one, human or Alerion, is safe. He must stop the sacrifice and undermine the authority of the Order at any cost, even if that means killing the girl himself.
A chance encounter between Wes and Ellie leads to a secret friendship and a blossoming romance. Eventually, they must find a way to save not only each other, but both of their worlds, before Ellie’s year is up and they are torn apart forever.
Time is running out.
Excerpt
If everything goes according to their plans, I will be dead in three hundred and seventy days.
