The first book in a powerful fantasy trilogy set in a world under martial law, where siblings are conscripted based on birth order. This debut novel has wide crossover appeal with heavy romance and an epic battle for power—perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and Fourth Wing.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Firstborn by M.J. Hastings, which is out now.
The first children take up arms.
The second children take up books.
The third children are taken.
Bryn Ruelle was never supposed to rank first. Yet there it was: her face, flashing across every scoreboard with 5:1 odds of winning. The top contender for the Long Night, the final test for the eldest daughters and sons of Durst. The Firstborn must prove they can take a life—or be exiled themselves. If they survive, they’ll graduate into soldiers dedicated to defending their borders against their magic-wielding neighbors in Arcania. Bryn has never made a kill before tonight. But by dawn, someone will be dead by her hands.
In case she doesn’t make it, she should say her goodbyes. To Asa, her brilliant younger brother, studying anti-magics at Midborn University. To little Wren, her odd duckling of a sister, soon to be taken away with the other Lastborn to a place from which none of the youngest children have ever returned. But Bryn has always known: key to their survival is loyalty to their class—to Dursti—before family.
Then Bryn finds an encryption revealing an Arcanist plot to kidnap the Lastborn, and she must discern if the threat to Wren is real—or a ruse to throw Bryn off her game before the Long Night. When her search for the truth forces her side-by-side with a traitor-born enemy, she risks everything she’s trained for, and faces an impossible choice: her country, or her family? Her siblings, or herself?
EXCERPT
It was a moonless night in the twenty-first year since the Arcania-Dursti ceasefire was called, and for nearly three hundred Firstborn soldiers, that meant one thing— the Trial of the Long Night would commence at dusk. I’d be naked before lunch, and dead by dawn.
The Long Night begins with flesh and ends with blood, the Sisters liked to say, as if their prose rendered the occasion mysterious and beautiful. I suppose it was better than saying, We’re taking bets on which of you live and which die, or There are no pretty soldiers in the top ten. The latter was surely true as I happened to be in the top ten, and no one could be less impressed by my godsdamned face than me.
At the moment, it was everywhere— posted on every placard and billboard, flashing from every rune screen, the changing odds updat-ing continuously thanks to the strange half magic we’d cracked from the Arcanists. It was worse in the Red Row, where more robust gambling took place, with the rich throwing down their piles of money on their favorite soldier. On the few occasions I’d walked past the Row, some asshole would inevitably frown at me, confused as to why I didn’t look like the woman peering down at them from the screen, where my own likeness smirked at the world with supreme confidence. It was a superior version of me, all creamy skin, glossy hair, and taut muscles, the picture of a honed, healthy soldier. Even a whisper of curves. It was laughable. Anyone who’d met me knew I was all sharp angles. All sharp everything.
I was nearly to the Paddock door when a whistle sounded from afar. “Bryn Ruelle!” someone shouted. “Take your clothes off, Ruelle!”
Ignore, ignore, ignore. I clenched my jaw hard enough to crack glass, all of me tense as a bowstring as dozens of eyes found me, fol-lowed by a chorus of cheers and taunts. The guard at the Paddock opened the gate to admit me, but two overzealous bookies rushed us. I kept my head bowed as the guard pushed them back, until one got past him and shoved a camera in my face, ripping my hood back in the process. It took me one move to wrench the bookie’s arm behind his back and immobilize him. I threw the camera on the ground, smiling when it broke into a dozen pieces.
“Fucking Bastard bitch,” the bookie hissed. “Don’t look nothing like your pictures!”
“How original of you,” I said with a sanguine smile, pushing him away from me with enough force that he stumbled across the pathway, cursing me all the while, a chorus of bitch and Bastard and scrawny nobody intended to thoroughly insult me. He was too stupid to real-ize he’d done me a favor. The news would pick up the story about our altercation, and it would only increase my odds. Ruelle looks tough. Ruelle looks ready. Ruelle is a godsdamned wild beast, some broadcaster would report. This morning was all about driving up odds. Good odds got me in the Oval earlier; getting in the Oval earlier meant more kills, and more kills were my ticket out of the Citadel. More kills meant sand between my toes, the wind whipping my cheeks, the sharp tang of brine— or so I had read. I’d never seen the North Sea, and the soldiers stationed there never returned. I couldn’t blame them.
The Paddock door slammed behind me with a clunk, bringing with it the smells of sweat and adrenaline and the lingering scent of cheap soap. The communal changing room was a ruckus today, men and women disrobing without reservation, sleek muscled flesh every-where you looked. Naked bodies held minimal shock value after years spent living in the barracks, but I might have enjoyed ogling a few of them had I not been so damned vexed by it all.
I walked past the inches of glorious skin, eyeing the screen dis-playing the rotating list of the Citadel’s most infamous criminals. As usual, the same one caught my eye: ENEMY NUMBER ONE, it read. Beneath it was a shadowy figure, a man whose face was cloaked in darkness save for the jagged scar snaking down his hideous visage. The Reaper, the Arcanist ghost we’d been hunting for two years now. His face was featured throughout the Citadel nearly as much as mine, tacked to every post and door and spare inch of wall. “You’ll be someone else’s problem tomorrow,” I muttered to his picture.
I made my way to a bench, where I sat for a long moment, steeling my nerves. Then I began to strip, moving too- thick fingers numbly down my army- issued jacket, and at last, at last I let myself look at the screens installed on every square inch of the space. It was a list of soldiers’ names, containing— wouldn’t you know it?— a picture of me. And my name was at the very top.
LONG NIGHT ODDS
Wagers taken at registered locations. No credit. Cash only.
First Position: Ruelle, Bryn: 5 to 1.
I huffed. I’d been trading the top spot with Tasch— that heartless, disgusting brute— back and forth over the last week, but overnight, my odds had improved to five to one. They were the best Long Night odds I’d ever seen.
For the past twenty years, the eldest Dursti sons and daugh-ters had been conscripted into Durst’s military academy, where they spent seven years becoming hardened, lethal soldiers who would be unleashed upon the Arcanists, our neighboring enemies, if they dared break the ceasefire again…or worse. They had magic, and we had none. Before we graduated, we were put to a final challenge— the Trial of the Long Night, where every Firstborn soldier must kill a Bastard to advance. Along the way, someone clever had decided a profit could be turned by betting upon which soldiers would make the most kills, and the pomp and circumstance around the Long Night had grown greater every year.
This year, that top soldier was me.
Five- to- one odds that I would not just survive, but make the most kills of any soldier, winning glory and bragging rights and the post of my choice. Any post, anywhere.
“You look especially grumpy today,” came a deep voice from behind me. It was Kir, my handsome, overly chipper roommate, unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his long, lean torso. “The top spot chafing a bit, Ruelle?” He gave me a cheeky grin. Kir could find a way to flirt in the middle of a beating. I suppose it was why we were good room-mates. Kir winked when I frowned. Kir laughed while I…frowned more deeply.
“I hate this,” I groused. “The festivities, the cameras everywhere, my stupid face on every screen.”
“Oh, come now, it’s not that stupid of a face,” he said with a smirk. “I nearly had to fight the two bookies who waylaid me on the way in.” “Ah, well, lucky for you that fighting is what you do best. Can’t
really blame them for wanting to get an early look at you before Promenade. It’s more money in their pockets if they can broadcast you first.”
I threw down the jacket, then started on my shirt, while Kir stripped off his pants. “But I do wonder,” he said, every inch of tanned muscle flexing as he stood, “if it’s the bookies who are bothering you or if it’s something else.” He shot me a knowing look. “A twelve- year- old something who shares your last name.”
“It’s not,” I said, tearing off my socks. Wren. My strange little sister. When would they come for her? We all knew the tired expression, the line from our Holy Book that had conscripted a generation of us into servitude. The Sisters of the Night whispered it like a prayer from beneath their blackened shrouds. To the rest of us, it was a curse:
The first children take up arms.
The second children take up books.
The third children are taken.
