Botanist's Game

Anabella Halt is the last heir to the Halt family's seat on the council, and she now finds herself both betrayed and promised in marriage. Her priority is to uncover the person who murdered her family and to track them down.

Ana once won a public contest by healing Adam Rockwell in front of the whole planet, which convinced everyone that she was the real heir. In truth, she faked the entire display, and she cannot heal even a minor cut. Within a year she is set to claim the council seat her family has held empty for a long time. That plan is threatened when Adam's father, the highest-ranking military figure on the planet, learns her secret. He will overlook it if she agrees to marry his son and form a strategic alliance with his family. Ana refuses at first, until he offers to free her friend Samuel from prison, a bargain she cannot easily turn down.

Ana has larger ambitions, though. She intends to learn who hired the person who betrayed her and to hunt that person down, since only then will she be truly free.

The Botanist's Game is the second volume of the Shadows & Starlight series. The other titles are Seven Crowns, Rule of Shadows and Fallen Kingdom. Readers who enjoyed the court intrigue of The Cruel Prince or the interstellar elements of Cinder may find the series appealing.