The Skarn Reach · Book 1
The Black Bond
She put him in a cage.
Three years later, his dragon chose her.
She put him in a cage. Three years later, his dragon chose her.
Mira Vasen is the smallest cadet at Aerithar Academy and the only one who has waited three years for the Pairing rite. She came to bond a dragon. She came to win a Riders’ Council vote. She came to make someone account for the night her mother burned in a barn at Brennfall.
What she did not come for was the tenth dragon.
Every generation, nine cadets bond. The tenth dragon always rejects its rider and kills them. It has happened for three hundred years. Until Vyrak, a black-scaled war dragon still mourning his original rider, lands in front of Mira Vasen and refuses to let her die.
His original rider is Aedran Korr, the disgraced war prince accused of the strike that destroyed Brennfall, locked in the lower vault for three years on the strength of one witness’s testimony.
Hers.
Now they are quartered together over the dragon’s loft, forced to fly as a co-bonded triad while a war erupts on the northern border. The bond strips them of the ability to lie to each other. They begin to feel each other’s grief, each other’s wanting, each other’s certainty that the other is the enemy. And somewhere in the central kingdom, a sitting member of the Council is watching to see whether the witness she once used will figure out what was done with her testimony — before the witness is allowed to fly long enough to find the document that proves it.
Two enemies. One dragon. One bond that cannot be lied across.
Inside The Black Bond
Every trope the genre contract requires.
Plus one the genre forgot.
Forced Proximity
One loft. One partition. One dragon refusing to choose.
Enemies to Lovers
She testified against him. His dragon chose her anyway.
Dragon-Bonded Triad
A bond that strips away the ability to lie across it.
Slow Burn
First kiss in the back third. Two open-door scenes earned.
Standalone
One book. One ending. No cliffhanger tax.
“He had said the name. I had thought it would be the largest thing said in this room tonight. It was the third largest.”
— The Black Bond, Chapter 31
For readers of
Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Carissa Broadbent’s The Serpent and the Wings of Night.
The same DNA. One arc. One book. The HEA earned. The magic costing something visible.
Companion Album
Twelve songs. One arc. Same emotional landscape.
Aurora Lyra scored a folk-orchestral album to The Black Bond’s emotional spine. Three movements: Threshold, Storm, Cost. Stream it while you read.
Listen Now →