The Borrowed Crown

About this novel

Kael Aldric Vance — a penniless farm boy from a forgotten village — talks his way into Argent Vale, one of the five great magical universities of the Kingdom of Veredon. During the entrance exam an inexplicable accident gives him the Echo: a forbidden ability to copy the magical talent of anyone he touches. Across six years of education, Kael must hide this secret while building a fortune from nothing, navigating noble politics, winning the heart of impossible women, and rising from the bottom of the class to a place at the Grand Arcanum — the once-every-four-years tournament where the continent's finest students compete for a seat in The Concordant, the secret order built to oppose the rising Throneless King of the Umbral Reach, a sealed kingdom whose long-buried master has begun, at last, to wake.