Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire. Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom. But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike. Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both.

HEADS WILL ROLLIt is 1799, the eve if a new century. In New York City, young Constable Ichabod Crane is eager to use his latest scientific methods and his powers of deduction to solve the most brutal of crimes. But nothing can prepare him for the shocking murders that take him far from the city's cobblestones to the eerie town of Sleepy Hollow. Awaiting him are three beheaded bodies, all apparently victims of a legendary Headless Horseman returned from the grave to exact revenge. With the help of an orphaned child and a beautiful young woman, Ichabod uses reason to confront the horrors of the unexplained. But the reality of Sleepy Hollow's waking nightmare is always before him. A reality where witches cast spells in the darkened woods...trees bleed...and a demon rides at night.

HEADS WILL ROLLIt is 1799, the eve if a new century. In New York City, young Constable Ichabod Crane is eager to use his latest scientific methods and his powers of deduction to solve the most brutal of crimes. But nothing can prepare him for the shocking murders that take him far from the city's cobblestones to the eerie town of Sleepy Hollow. Awaiting him are three beheaded bodies, all apparently victims of a legendary Headless Horseman returned from the grave to exact revenge. With the help of an orphaned child and a beautiful young woman, Ichabod uses reason to confront the horrors of the unexplained. But the reality of Sleepy Hollow's waking nightmare is always before him. A reality where witches cast spells in the darkened woods...trees bleed...and a demon rides at night.

This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9781595148032.Laia is a slave.  Elias is a soldier.  Neither is free. Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear. It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do. But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy. There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.