PEARL & PURLIEUS

In the Outer Reaches, where whole lives are counted but small change—this life—is a world’s ransom!

The foundling in the forest with the injured paw is no pet, nor even an animal. He is a mythic godling, and the key to an entire world’s survival—but young girls will pick up strays…

Thaden warns Kora against rescuing the creature caught on Wildthorne’s eastern rim. But they both know Kora can never abandon a vulnerable soul, no matter the mythos.

Soon after, the godling Lynnix returns to his world, but his life-debt remains. And the gods never forget.

* * *

Officially, Tristendon is a school dedicated to teaching the science of gatecraft and inter-world travel. Unofficially, it is a superhighway to the wealth of worlds—traveled by shape-shifting godlings, gate mages, and those who hunt them.

As a gate student from the impoverished Outer Reaches, Kora Featherstone stumbles into spectacular cultural faux pas as she embarks on her journey to learn gate-travel, to break caste, to find her lost friend.

Thaden follows behind, mediating each crisis, trying to find the heart he lost when he was too young to protect himself, knowing that together they could master the gates. But what begins as a simulated exercise will propel them far beyond Tristendon, and cut each of them to the bone.