Falcon Flight

Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days meets Lisa T. Bergrin's A River of Time Series.

Long lost keeper of the keys and unfit first daughter, Kyrin Cieri is the hope of Cierheld stronghold or its doom.

She returns to Britannia from slavery, and ambitious lords and the intrigue she thought she left behind in Araby engulf her stronghold. The king dies and a treacherous hand wounds Kyrin’s father.

Torn by love, loyalty, and intrigue between a lord’s son she’s sworn never to handfast, a rival stronghold daughter, her father’s life, and the wazir’s vengeance, Kyrin must find the strength to become who she was born to be, or all will end in ash.

Behind them all lurks the tiger of destruction. The falcon dagger holds the key to life, death, and a traitor deeper yet.

Adventure beyond fear . . .

Excerpt:
A belligerent horn blared. Keffer’s men ran from the gate. And it was as if the world ended. A thunderous noise and a slap as of a giant hand hurled against the gate knocked Kyrin sprawling on a blast of air and shards of wood. She rolled over in the mud. The gate creaked open thirty paces away, buckled and splintered, within a bitter stink and another cloud of dark smoke. Her vision blurred in and out, and she hardly heard Lord Nidfael Keffer’s men give a single shout as they moved back again.

And Lord Keffer rode through the inner gate on a white horse, twin to Mornoth’s. It paced past Kyrin toward the hall, so close she could have touched Nidfael’s sweat-stained leather stirrup. Her breath froze in her chest; she couldn’t move. Wherever her blurred gaze fell, Cierheldens were being disarmed. Her men had gone, dead or fled the sorcerous blast. Sorcery—or—Tae had said something of a strange black powder of enormous power when joined by flame in a contained space. The men of the East held keen wit for inventions of death. And Mornoth used it against them.
. . .
Kyrin staggered and sank to her knees in the thawing mud, suddenly conscious she was holding herself up by her sword, point first in the earth. Around her, Nidfael’s men lifted their blades warily. One man tilted a pike toward her. Could they know who she was?

Before Cierheld hall, Lord Keffer’s mailed back was straight. A polearm guard of six bristled around him. The gates were packed with men bearing the white horse-head. Kyrin looked at her sword, and let it fall. Cierheld was lost. There was no escape. She sagged over her knees, too sick to cry, and her bow dug into her shoulder, the tip on the ground bending dangerously. She could save that. Kyrin laid her bow on the ground with shaking hands and slid her quiver over her head, lowering it to the earth. A weapon cared for was a later friend.
. . .
Kyrin tilted her head; Lord Nidfael’s men watched him implore and demand by turns. These were her people. She was not what she wished, but better her than no one. Tae also said, Never give up. Kyrin slid an arrow from her quiver, the edges of her vision greying on Lord Keffer.

Steeling herself against a blade or an arrow in the back, she stood slowly, leaning on her bow, one arm limp at her side. The same shoulder her mail had plagued earlier. She did not feel it now.

“Do not be foolish, this is the last grace I will give,” Lord Keffer cried. “Surely, you cannot all be fools?” His blue tunic was bright.

Together we cry, full to the wide blue sky. Rise over stone, for hope to vie. Spread wings where freedoms lie.

His closest man was ten paces away. Kyrin quietly nocked the arrow. The arrow her father had given her. Though it was not red but black. May you fly true.