Sixty to One

The house never bets on a man. Until now. Two hundred and eleven days after a stone arch took her off a sidewalk, Nevaeh has paid her debts, raised a dragon to the size of a pony, and chalked one name on her loft wall: CAPTAIN SERE. The house has posted the line on stopping him. Sixty to one against — the same odds it gives Veyth, the ancient dragon who burns towns to make a point. Then a cellar wall gives way under her own town, and behind it stands an arch of the same black stone as the Gate. Three hundred and eleven steps down, forty-one missing workers are still building, thorns grown into the base of their skulls, working well and not speaking. Eleven steps from the top, a voice in a crack in the wall asks if she is real. And above ground the powers of the realm have stopped seeing a person and started seeing a position: a Court observer who proposes binding sixty people, a warden's house going quietly broke, and a dragon in the sky who was never hunting — only demonstrating. Sere is at the end of the long road: four wells, and nobody runs, because nobody can carry enough water to make the fifth day. To reach one man on it, Nevaeh will have to learn what reaching him costs. The house has already priced it. It is still waiting to be wrong. Book Two of DEAD MONEY, grimdark progression fantasy for readers of Solo Leveling, Dungeon Crawler Carl and Goblin Slayer. Adult: graphic combat violence, slavery, body horror. No sexual violence.