What it is: NA “light grimdark” Fantasy I’m so bad a genres I’m sorry
Themes: friendship and trust, power, self-worth, loyalty, beauty, choice and responsibility, redemption
Story Overview: A blackmailed pit fighter defies her scheming parents and uncovers deadly secrets as she races to protect the stranger she was supposed to kill.
In an ancient desert city, Ailin is sent to assassinate a stranger. Instead, she fakes his death, struggling to learn why he was targeted with the help of a rescued forger. When her target is discovered alive, Ailin races to keep ahead of the new assassin coming for all of them. With time running out, and the city closing in, Ailin initiates a desperate plan to end the cycle of violence one and for all. In the aftermath, sand settles over a city forever changed, and Ailin assembles the pieces of a fresh start.
Time-touched Ailin’s body can sense what is about to happen to it in the seconds before it does. This, coupled with a lifetime of intensive combat training, has molded her into a deadly weapon. She reluctantly helps her parents hustle pit fights, deal with threats, gather information, and other such unscrupulous dealings. When they send her to assassinate a stranger, Ailin turns her back on her blood-soaked past for a dangerous rebellion against everything she’s ever known. As her old world closes in, Ailin must choose how far she’s willing to go to forge a new life.
For a lowly government clerk, Zaul holds far too many secrets. A talented forger, he has gained himself a large network of contacts, all on his side until he becomes too much of a threat. He’s beginning to suspect his hobby-turned-criminal-enterprise has gotten away from him, but he’s not as unprepared for the consequences as his enemies might think. With his own lineage of power, Zaul has one trick left that no one has ever discovered, and he hopes they never will.
Dymas has held the same job for the past 12 years, every day nearly identical to the one before, exactly as he likes it. He handles all channels of information between the Oracle and the outside world, and runs a tight, efficient department. But some of his staff may be attempting to undermine the Oracle, one of his clerks is definitely a criminal, and a strange pit fighter claims there’s a steep price on his head. With his nice neat life thrown into terrifying chaos, Dymas struggles to choose who to trust, and survive the strange new world of plots, assassins, and unknowns.
Status: Fully outlined, working on writing the outline draft (or “zero draft”)
