STORMBOUND ~BY SHIVAM THAKUR Twenty-one-year-old Elara Veyne enters Stormhold, Vaeloria's brutal aerial war college, carrying two secrets: forbidden storm magic, and the dangerous suspicion that her executed father was right when he claimed the Crown was deliberately provoking dragons toward war. Kael Draven is Stormhold's feared cadet commander—powerful, disciplined, the son of a condemned traitor, bonded to an ancient black dragon, and secretly ordered to eliminate Elara if she proves a threat. Then Binding Day changes everything. Aestra—a silver-blue Tempest dragon who has refused every rider for 187 years—chooses Elara. And bows. Thrown together by duty, drawn together by a pull neither can outrun, Elara and Kael move from enemies to reluctant allies to something far more dangerous. Their investigation into their fathers' supposed treason uncovers Project Dominion—a Crown plot to sever dragon bonds and forge an army of enslaved dragons, built atop an infrastructure older than the kingdom itself. But the truth beneath Stormhold runs deeper than any conspiracy. The Stormbound connection between Elara, Kael, Aestra, and Kael's dragon Nyxar was never meant to return. And the magical prison beneath their world was not designed only to keep something out. When war ignites and the final locks shatter, Elara and Kael must choose between the empire that raised them and the dangerous, fragile trust that might be the only thing keeping the sky from falling. "Some cages protect both sides. Some chains, when broken, open every door."
