Ilyra

Ilyra has killed three dragons for coin and earned every scar. The fourth is supposed to be a job like the others — the last serpent of the Cloudspine, a half-turned thing the villages pay well to forget. But Vaskan doesn't die when she strikes, and he doesn't kill her when he could. He offers a trade instead: help him break the curse that holds him between shapes, and he'll give her the name of the man who killed her mother. She should say no. She says yes. Up the frozen spine, through gutted keeps and stone-throwing villages, the two of them build something neither will name — until the name she's owed turns out to lead straight back to the warlord who paid her to hunt him.