Blood on the Sand

Aelys wanted to move on, but her family wants her back in her place, and strange forces move against her loved ones even as her partners try to work out their relationships with one another and her.
IN HER DARKEST HOUR, AELYS CHOSE FREEDOM . . . BUT CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Bellatrix Aelys turned her back on the family that betrayed her and chose to forge her own destiny alongside the dangerous men she had accidentally bound. Now free, Romik, Vil, and Daen make the uneasy choice to continue to work with Aelys as her protectors and business partners. But when Aelys faced off against her family, she didn’t eliminate every threat, and now mysterious forces are moving against her once more. Fearing for her safety and that of her men, Aelys agrees to do a simple task for her old teacher: escort some old “friends” to Zandrine, one of the fabled cities located in the south of the empire.
Only, not everything is as it seems. Zandrine is a city built on secrets and blood and pain. Aelys and her protectors will have to face the demons of the past and the dark schemes of the present, all while trying to figure out who they are to one another and how the four of them— warrior, sorceress, forester, and thief—can meld their strengths to keep each other alive.
Can Aelys, Romik, Vil, and Daen make the necessary hard choices that will forge them into a team capable of surviving these new challenges? Or will the pain of the past and the danger of the present destroy them one by one?

After retiring from the USAF and flying medical emergency helicopters, Kacey Ezell is a full-time writer who specializes in sci-fi/fantasy/alt history/horror fiction. Her first novel was a Dragon Award finalist in 2018, and her stories have been featured in Baen’s Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction compilation in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, her story "Family Over Blood" won the 2018 Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Reader’s Choice Award. She writes for Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing.