"Before the Reckoning"

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She stole to survive. Now the light in her veins is a death sentence. Pilika has spent her life reading the ledgers no one wants her near: who owns the collectors, who signs the warrants, whose door gets the red seal. In the floating slums of Saltmere, that arithmetic is the only thing standing between her and the water. Then a job goes wrong. A shack collapses. Three of Viktor's enforcers die in the wreckage, and Pilika wakes up glowing. The King's Shadow harvests the Touched, hunting down anyone whose body cracks open into something bright and dangerous, and renders them down at the Iron Spires for a Cure that buys the regime's favorites another twenty years. Gault's ledger already has her name in it. She has days, maybe less, before a Deepstone rod twitches her way. Her only way out is Senna: a woman with dormant marks at her wrists, amber tools she won't explain, and a voice that carries no warmth except in her hands. Senna will teach Pilika to bank her power, to walk past checkpoints without lighting up, to stop being inventory. What she won't say is why she's bothering. Before the Reckoning is a taut, atmospheric dark fantasy for readers who love grimy port cities, magic that costs something, and heroines who fight back with whatever the ledger left them. Includes: a chosen one who never wanted the job • magic that curses as much as it saves • a reluctant mentor with her own agenda • debt bondage and a regime that owns bodies like property • a morally grey heroine • found family fraying at every seam For fans of: Scott Lynch • Joe Abercrombie • Leigh Bardugo • N.K. Jemisin