The Nine Skies

Senna Hartwell has spent her life hidden as the soft, overlooked daughter of a disgraced healer house, until Maelor, the crown’s ancient war-leviathan, refuses every warrior in three kingdoms and chooses her instead.

Everyone thinks the dragon wanted a rider. He wanted a bond-healer. The Iron Brand around his heart has nine coils, and each can only be severed at a sacred thin-place in the open sky. To free him, Senna and Maelor must cross the Gold Reaches, the Singing Shoals, the Thunderhead Wastes, the Emberfall, the Frostmarch, and beyond, hunted by the kingdoms that built their peace on his leash.

Every coil cut gives Maelor back a piece of himself. Every severing binds them closer. At the top of the world, freeing him means choosing a bond no crown can command.

The dragon picked me. I thought he wanted a rider. He wanted the one healer alive who could cut the leash off his heart.