Carve the Mark

About the Carve the Mark series

In a galaxy where every person is marked at adolescence by a currentGift -- a power drawn from the mysterious energy that runs through everything -- Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth are shaped by their currentGifts into weapons for other people's wars. Cyra's gift channels the current into constant, involuntary pain, a curse her brother Ryzek, the tyrannical leader of the planet Thuvhe's rival nation Shotet, exploits by using her to torture his prisoners. Akos, kidnapped from his family's farm along with his brother, discovers his own currentGift renders him immune to other people's abilities entirely -- including Cyra's pain, which his touch can numb. Forced together as captor and unwilling servant, the two form a wary, then genuine, alliance that puts them both at odds with the political machine grinding toward war around them.

Carve the Mark builds a science-fantasy setting where genetic 'fate' -- prophesied, tattoo-marked destinies read from the stars -- collides with the more ordinary tyranny of family, empire and violence passed down as inheritance; Cyra and Akos both spend the duology trying to decide how much of what they've been told about themselves and each other is true, and how much they can choose to rewrite. The Fates Divide pushes the political stakes to their breaking point as the war between Thuvhe and Shotet comes to a head, forcing both currentGifted teenagers to decide what they're willing to sacrifice -- and become -- to stop it.