Lightning and Ember

No expectations—no chance for disappointment.

Akina de Kitamura had long given up hope that Volandrian nobility would come to accept her and her identical twin sister, Miki. Four years at the Academy, Volandria's most prestigious military school, hadn't changed her opinion. They were bastard children, the product of a Volandrian nobleman's tryst with a Solterrean commoner. Even the favor of famed commander Marquis Genji de Kitamura, their uncle, couldn't spare them from scorn. Her engagement to her childhood friend Cassius d'Etrius's older brother compounded the sentiment when the former heir to the duchy fled in the dead of night after murdering his family.

She hated that her sister and her friend saw the exposition at the end of graduation as their chance to force the haughty nobles to acknowledge them. The event brought the best and the brightest from military schools across the Four Kingdoms. It also brought along increased pressure to perform. All eyes would be on the Academy graduates to deliver as this year's hosts, and Cassius and Miki had no intention of letting the opportunity slip by for any of them, even if it meant dragging Akina along with them,

However, when an unexpected intruder brings about shocking revelations concerning the past, the trio realizes nothing ever goes quite as planned. With their wits and training to guide them, they race to adjust to the changing landscape and protect one another from harm.