Crowning Fantasy

Two dying races. One impossible bond. Mina is a Mikachiari servant in the stone city of Rasima, counting down the days until the ritual every girl of her kind is forced to endure. When her first blood arrives, so does her death sentence. The priestess says it is the will of the goddess. But no one has seen the enemy who supposedly makes it necessary in generations, and Mina is done taking that on faith.
Gumus is Kertenkele, one of the last of a race of giants who traded their freedom for shelter in the mines. A curse is burning through him, the kind that ends in a rampage so terrible his own brothers have sentenced him to die. Then he stumbles across a small, furious creature hiding in an alley, and the fire inside him goes quiet for the first time in months. Neither of them understands what has locked them together.
Neither of them can undo it. What they do know is that staying means death for them both, so they run, across deserts and wild lands full of pirates, magic users, and monsters, toward a distant port and the truth about the ritual that was meant to erase Mina's people forever. But every ally has a price, every rescuer a secret, and the reason the Mikachiari are being hunted is worse than anyone will say out loud.
Mina carries something her whole race thought was lost. And that makes her the most dangerous thing in Varlid. A sweeping fantasy of survival, betrayal, and the strange loyalty that grows between two of the world's forgotten, Crowning Fantasy is the first book in an epic new saga.