From the acclaimed author of The Real Boy and The Lost Girl comes
a wondrous and provocative fantasy about a kingdom beset by monsters, a
mysterious school, and a girl caught in between them.
If no one notices Marya Lupu, is likely because of her brother, Luka.
And that's because of what everyone knows: that Luka is destined to
become a sorcerer.
The Lupus might be from a small village far from the capital city of
Illyria, but that doesn't matter. Every young boy born in in the kingdom
holds the potential for the rare ability to wield magic, to protect the
country from the terrifying force known only as the Dread.
For all the hopes the family has for Luka, no one has any for Marya, who
can never seem to do anything right. But even so, no one is prepared for
the day that the sorcerers finally arrive to test Luka for magical
ability, and Marya makes a terrible mistake. Nor the day after, when the
Lupus receive a letter from a place called Dragomir Academy--a
mysterious school for wayward young girls. Girls like Marya.
Soon she is a hundred miles from home, in a strange and unfamiliar
place, surrounded by girls she's never met. Dragomir Academy promises
Marya and her classmates a chance to make something of themselves in
service to one of the country's powerful sorcerers. But as they learn
how to fit into a world with no place for them, they begin to discover
things about the magic the men of their country wield, as well as the
Dread itself--things that threaten the precarious balance upon which
Illyria is built.
