Guild Mage

Liv Brodbeck is too small, too fragile, and—according to everyone—a burden on her mother from the day she was born. A bastard child in a castle kitchen, she has no prospects. But when she accidentally unleashes a surge of wild magic, she takes her first step on a journey that will lead her from the kitchens of Castle Whitehill, to the cold palaces of the Eld, and beyond—to the graves of gods.

Magic has changed everything for Liv. Now an apprentice of the Watchful Guild of Magim, she wields the ancient magic of the Old Gods—cutting shards of ice, frozen walls. But peaceful training days are cut short by the Day of Blood, when monstrous living orbs of viscera slaughter people across the kingdom. Thrust into the schemes of the royal court in the capital, Liv must navigate noble intrigue while across the sea, the resurrected Lady of Blood gathers her forces for a return that will make the Day of Blood look like merely the first taste.

At the Coral Bay College of Vaedic Grammar, Liv will study under the most powerful mages in Lucania. Armed with a second secret word of power, a new bodyguard, and political backing from the now-ducal Summerset family, she is finally positioned to prepare for the coming war against the Lady of Blood. But not everyone at the college judges by talent alone, and being a half-Elden bastard earns her enemies among the aristocratic student body—even as an Old God grows her power for the first time in twelve hundred years.

After surviving the attack on Coral Bay, Liv's most deadly secret is in danger of being exposed. To protect her, Archmagus Jurian sends Liv, Wren, and Arjun to the fortress-city of Akela Kila, where the Well of Bones is erupting with an endless tide of re-animated corpses. But the true danger waits back at Coral Bay, where the new monarch of Lucania has thrown the future of the Mages Guild into turmoil.