Chosen Names

THEY CHOOSE YOUR NAME. WHO DO YOU CHOOSE TO BE?

Mercy is sent to the Academy because losing her would cost her family least.

Rogue is given a simpler choice: Academy service, or a labour assignment designed to kill her.

The Academy takes people apart, classifies what remains and decides what they are useful for. Mercy is quiet, overlooked and apparently without magic. Rogue is a recaptured Kethari deserter who has survived by refusing to become what others demand.

Then the Academy pairs them.

Forced to train, fight and survive together, Mercy and Rogue become something the institution never intended: loyal to each other before they are loyal to it.

But beneath the Academy's brutal training lies something worse. Magical readings that should be impossible, a failing Ward Network and signs of hidden experimentation point toward secrets the institution is determined to keep buried, and suggest Mercy and Rogue were never paired by accident.

As Mercy and Rogue draw the attention of people within the Academy, alliances begin to blur into attraction, desire and loyalties neither woman expected to form. But in a place where every connection can be exploited, trusting someone may be dangerous, and wanting them even more so.

And the closer Mercy and Rogue come to the truth, the harder it becomes to decide who deserves their trust, their loyalty and a place beside them.

They were brought to the Academy to become useful.

Surviving it may mean becoming something else entirely.

Chosen Names is the first book in the Quill & Steel series, an adult slow-burn why-choose dark romantasy about dangerous magic, found family, institutional control, complicated desire and choosing who you become when everyone else has already decided for you.