Anyone know what this novel is called?
Saw this on Facebook, downloaded the app but I can't find the novel ... Anyone know what it's called?
Every girl the Dragon King brings into his chamber burns alive. He has been searching for a queen who can stand in his fire for nine hundred years. Hundreds of tributes. Not one survivor. And this morning, I was chosen.
...
The herald read my name in the market square.
I knew what the tribute list meant. Every five years the Dragon Court chose unmarried girls from the human towns. They called them brides. They called them offerings. They called them many gentle things. None of them ever came home.
I had until sundown. That was the law. A girl on the list could be excused if she was already wed by the time the dragon's carriage came.
I had been engaged to Ethan Crowell since I was four years old. The promise had been made in our garden with daisies in my hair. We would marry today. Today the wedding would save my life.
I ran.
I tripped on a loose stone halfway up the lane and split my knee open on the gravel. I didn't feel it. I got up and ran the rest of the way with bl**d streaking down my shin.
The Crowell front door was open.
That should have been the first sign. The Crowells never left their door open.
"Ethan."
He turned when he heard me, and his face went still. Not surprised. Not happy. Just still — like a man who'd been waiting for something he didn't want to do.
"My name is on the list," I said in a rush. "We have until sundown. We have to go to the priest. Ethan, we have to go now."
He didn't move.
"Ethan. They will k*ll me."
A door opened behind him. My stepsister Delilah walked into the room in a pale yellow dress I had never seen before. Her hand rested on her stomach. I looked at her hand, and I could not look anywhere else.
"He isn't joking, Lyra." She sounded almost kind. "I'm three months along. He won't let his child be a bastard. You understand."
Three months ago Ethan had been picking apples in his mother's orchard with me. Three months ago he had told me I was the only girl he had ever wanted. Three months ago I had been sitting in his lap, laughing.
"It was an accident," Ethan said quickly. "Lyra, listen to me — it was just one night, I swear it, I love you—"
"Don't."
I didn't recognize my own voice.
He had known me for sixteen years. He had known since we were children which of us I hated. He chose her anyway. He could not marry me because of his child — but he could send me to a dragon to d*e.
"I'm telling my father," I said.
Delilah laughed.
It was a small, ugly laugh. The laugh of a girl who had been waiting a long time to make a particular sound. "Oh, Lyra. Father already knows. He's known for months. Why do you think he never stopped us?"
...
My father was in his study.
He looked up when I came in. He did not stand.
"Father. Tell me Delilah is lying."
He did not say anything.
I felt something inside me break very quietly.
"How long have you known?"
He set down his pen. He folded his hands on the desk. Those hands had once held mine when I was small enough to fit in the crook of his arm.
"Long enough," he said.
That was all.
Behind me Delilah's voice: "Father, we need to lock her in her room. She'll try to run."
"Lyra," my father said, his eyes on me but not seeing me. "You understand what would happen if I refused the King's tribute. The whole household would be punished."
"Father. I am your daughter."
"Guards," he said, without raising his voice.
Two of them came in from the hall. They had been standing there the whole time. They had been waiting for him to call them.
At the door I stopped, and I looked over my shoulder at my father one more time, because I needed to see his face when I said it.
"I hope you remember this."
He did not look up.
I had spent twenty years loving these people. Not one of them had ever loved me back.
...
The lock on my bedroom door clicked behind me, and I cried until there was nothing left.
There was only one thing in that room I wanted to touch. In the bottom drawer of my dresser, wrapped in linen, was the one thing of my mother's the new wife had not been able to find and sell. A thin silver chain. A small green stone the color of river-glass.
I held it in my fist all night.
By morning, Delilah was waiting at the carriage.
She leaned in close to my ear like a friend. Her breath smelled of breakfast tea.
"Lyra. Before you go. Your mother left a will."
I went still.
"She wrote it so all of it would come to you on the day you wed. Father has been keeper of your money since you were six. Now you are a tribute, and there will be no wedding. He will keep it. Forever. So when you ask yourself why he didn't fight harder for you — that's why."
She let go of my arm. "Safe journey."
The carriage door shut. The wheels began to move.
I sat with my hands flat on my knees and let the truth come up.
The fire when I was six. The fire that took my mother. The fire that was supposed to take me too. I had been sent to fetch a candle. I had come back to a wall of flame.
I had been six years old, and I had never once asked what had started it.
The carriage rolled past the gate. I came back to myself all at once and pounded on the glass.
"Delilah! Tell my father something for me. Tell him I am coming back. Tell him I am coming back from the Dragon Court alive."
She was smiling.
I sat down. My hand closed around the necklace through the front of my dress. The words were out of my mouth now. That meant I would have to keep them.
...
Posted May 28, 2026, 10:44 AM UTC