Taye Inuejulawo

She was never the daughter anyone expected to be sent up that mountain.

For a hundred years, Ironhold has paid the Dragon King a strange yearly tribute, one daughter of the royal house, sent to serve at his court. Everyone assumed it would be Bryn's beautiful older sister. Instead, to save her, Bryn puts on her sister's cloak, packs her own forge tools, and rides into the mountain herself.

She expects a monster. She finds a king who has spent a century turning himself into one on purpose, guarding a burned wing of his castle that no one is allowed to enter, and a grief he's never let anyone near.

But the treaty that brought her to him was never goodwill. It was payment for something her own family has hidden for generations, and the truth, once it surfaces, could burn down everything they've built.