Prologue

In the impenetrable valley that Kylah has called home for all of her seventeen years, she is about to face the Branding, a lawless annual event where the young men who have just reached manhood seek to snare themselves a wife. And where the young women must choose between surrendering to their captors and the humiliation of being branded, or fighting them to the death.

Kylah isn't ready to visit the afterlife so soon, nor is she subservient enough to make a good wife. Her only option is to flee. But how to escape the inescapable is a problem she is yet to resolve. And when her would-be master reveals he is not what he seems, her attempt may be defeated for good.