The Keepers

Witches bow to no queen, they hold loyalty to no crown. Witches cannot be trusted even when they offer healing, for they never do so without a price. Raised in a world adhering to careful truths, Aleris learns to hide her magic from a young age. Her adoptive parents train her to be normal as she takes her place as the second daughter of the ambitious Orcharder family.

When death and disaster rip apart the Orcharders, Aleris finally gives in to her witchery. She answers the Call to join the secretive, powerful Coven of the Keepers. Magic, she learns quickly, is more than medicine: It keeps the world turning. The sacrifices that requires, though, eventually grate against Aleris’ conscience. She saves a life sentenced to death by fate itself, setting off a chain of events that will ignite a war.

New truths and old assumptions twist together as Queen Daphne of Sanverra, whose death was fated, lives. Not unscathed, though; Daphne realizes that witches were involved in her near loss of life and vows her revenge on witchkind. This, the queen declares, means war—and her allies agree. Aleris and her own unlikely allies find themselves facing a fight they never wanted for their right to simply live as they were born.