The Engine of Sivas-bek

She knows every back road in the kingdom, but the one path she cannot map is the one out of the trials. Conscripted as an apprentice to a mentor whose methods are lethal and whose motives are entirely hidden, a long-haul courier with a failing heart must survive a brutal testing ground. Here, the kingdom's heirs do not rule—they compete, they bleed, and they die alongside commoners in service to the Engine, a terrifying machine that consumes more than just fuel to keep their borders safe. When a deadly rival heir becomes an agonizingly necessary partner, she realizes survival means feeding the very system that is killing her, or tearing it apart from the inside.