Sword and Serpent (Unabridged‪)‬

Every legend has a beginning....

The year is A.D. 299. Diocletian rules the Roman Empire. And the gods have suddenly fallen silent. Seventeen-year-old Jurian doesn’t have time for the gods. He’s trying to hold his family together after his father died in disgrace, and piety, even to the Christ, just isn’t practical.

But then, a ruthless enemy targets his family, forcing Jurian to make a choice: will he pursue the glory he’s always wanted, or will he sacrifice everything to protect a faith that was never really his own?

On the other side of the Empire, the young priestess Sabra shields her people from the terrible vengeance of the old god she serves. But even as she offers the dark and bloody sacrifices the god demands, visions of desolation haunt her dreams. As suspicion tightens its stranglehold on her city, Sabra must unravel the mystery of the god’s portents before everything she’s ever loved is destroyed. Fear of the gods’ silence sparks a bloody persecution that will soon consume the Empire.

As the fires of suspicion and hatred ignite around them, Jurian and Sabra are drawn together by a mysterious prophecy, one that will set them on a journey to battle an evil beyond imagining. Saints aren’t born. They are forged.