In Merithel, talent is not a gift. It is a sentence.
Nayra Vale has spent her life clawing her way up from poverty with nothing but perfect pitch, a battered guitar, and a voice powerful enough to make the Jury listen. Winning the competition is supposed to be her escape. Her proof that she deserves more than the life Merithel assigned her.
River Corvin is the only musician talented enough to destroy her chance at victory. Brilliant, ruthless, and impossible to ignore, he is everything Nayra should hate. And she does, until his warnings become harder to ignore. Until the cracks in Merithel’s perfect image start spreading. Until she realizes River may know the one truth the city has spent twenty-one years trying to bury.
Officials are vanishing. Records are being erased. Bridges are collapsing. And beneath the lights, the applause, and the promise of glory, the competition begins to look less like a dream and more like a trap. Nayra and River were never meant to trust each other. They were meant to compete, to burn, to break in front of an audience hungry for blood. But as hatred turns into something far more dangerous, Nayra must decide what she is willing to risk for the truth, for freedom, and for the boy who could either ruin her future or become the only reason she survives it.
Because in Merithel, winning can make you powerful. Refusing to win can make you a threat.
