After surviving the Hunger Games–like Testing, Eva becomes the Aerie’s first female Archon. The second installment of the Books of Eva continues the harrowing struggle between past and present, Aerie and Boundary.
Eva is the first Maiden in Aerie history to train as an Archon: a sacred leader of the New North. All eyes are watching as she prepares to uncover the Relics of the evil past. Wounds remain, both from the harrowing Testing and the murder of her brother, Eamon, but she has learned to feign grace. And although she is betrothed to Jasper, she still finds herself drawn to Lukas, a Boundary dweller and former servant who may know who killed her twin brother.
Her relationship with Lukas is forbidden. And his conviction that she is the Angakkuq, a mystical figure destined to destroy the Aerie, is even more dangerous. On her very first Archon expedition, she uncovers the Genesis, the legendary ship that brought the Founders to the New North; its contents threaten the fragile balance between the Aerie and the Boundary. Eva’s world is shattered, but she may be the only one—as both Archon and Angakkuq—who can prevent a war that will annihilate their entire civilization.
“Heather Terrell excavates a richly realized and adventurous world from the iced-over wreck of our own.”—William Alexander, New York Times bestselling author and 2012 National Book Award winner, on Relic
The truth will test you.
For fans of Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games, high fantasy and dystopia meet in this high-stakes tale of a civilization built on lies and the girl who single-handedly brings it down.
When Eva’s twin brother, Eamon, falls to his death just a few months before he is due to participate in the Testing, no one expects Eva to take his place. She’s a Maiden, slated for embroidery classes, curtseys, and soon a prestigious marriage befitting the daughter of an Aerie ruler. But Eva insists on honoring her brother by becoming a Testor. After all, she wouldn’t be the first Maiden to Test—just the first in 150 years.
Eva knows the Testing is no dance class. Gallant Testors train for their entire lives to search icy wastelands for Relics: artifacts of the corrupt civilization that existed before the Healing drowned the world. Out in the Boundary Lands, Eva must rely on every moment of the lightning-quick training she received from Lukas, her servant, a Boundary native and her closest friend now that Eamon is gone.
But there are threats in the Testing beyond what Lukas could have prepared her for. And no one could have imagined the danger Eva unleashes when she discovers a Relic that shakes the Aerie to its core.
