Frozen

The first book in the Heart of Dread series is set in a post-apocalyptic frozen world. Global wars, massive floods, and a final "Big Freeze" buried most of the earth under ice. The Remaining States of America (RSA) governs through martial law and a vast military apparatus. Children born with unusually colored eyes and strange marks, called the "marked," possess abilities such as telekinesis. They are feared, registered, and confined to government treatment centers. Other magical beings have emerged from the ice: smallmen (fully grown adults the size of toddlers), sylphs (an ethereal, luminous people), and drau (monstrous creatures).

An unnamed girl imprisoned in a towering facility hears a deep, monstrous voice urging her to escape. Her hazel-green eyes with golden pupils and the flame-shaped mark above her heart identify her as marked, and her captors have been trying to weaponize her abilities. The voice tells her a map has been found and she must journey to the Blue, a legendary land beyond the ruined Pacific Ocean. When guards approach, she smashes through her window 200 stories up, and power surges through her as she leaps, gliding safely into a snowbank.

The girl takes the name Nat and hides her marked eyes behind gray contact lenses, finding work as a blackjack dealer at the Loss casino in New Vegas, a frontier gambling city. The voice demands she ask her boss, Old Joe, about a blue stone he wears. When Nat peers through the stone, she sees blue water and a charted course. The voice identifies it as Anaximander's Map, the key to Arem, the doorway to Vallonis, or the Blue. Nat uses a subtle compulsion to obtain the stone, but that night authorities take Joe away, and Nat knows she must flee.

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Ryan Wesson, known as Wes, a former Marine sergeant turned mercenary, turns down a military contract from his former captain, Bradley, that would require hunting marked refugees. Wes's parents died young, and his twin sister Eliza was taken from the family. He leads a small, hungry crew: Shakes (Vincent Valez), his right-hand man; hotheaded brothers Daran and Zedric Slaine; and 13-year-old Farouk Jones. Wes attempts a con at Nat's table, but she sees through it and uses telekinesis to pocket four platinum chips worth 20,000 credits. When Nat seeks a runner to cross the ocean, Wes's name surfaces, and she offers the chips as payment.

Wes suspects Nat may possess Anaximander's Map. His crew votes on whether to accept the job or turn her in for bounty, and Wes breaks the tie, privately planning to earn her trust and take the map. They depart immediately, fighting through a military pursuit to cross into Garbage Country, the lawless wasteland beyond the city. They pass MacArthur Med, the treatment center where Nat was imprisoned, and witness escapees being shot.

Through the wasteland they encounter "thrillers," marked people whose magic rots them alive while their minds remain alert. Nat realizes this fate awaits all marked people who remain in this world. A gas leak forces a detour to K-Town, a thriving underground settlement in the ruins of Los Angeles. After bribing a military seeker patrol with a platinum chip, they arrive and Wes reveals he lost his ship gambling. Nat must win it back from Avo Hubik, a notorious slaver, in a poker game. Disguised as a wealthy trophy wife, she wagers pre-Flood sea salt and wins the ship, the Albatross (Alby).

The crew departs into the toxic Pacific. Aboard ship, Nat and Wes circle each other with growing attraction, but Nat fears Wes wants the map more than he wants her, while Wes finds his feelings undermining his plan to steal the stone. When the Slaine brothers confront Nat below decks, demanding she prove she is not marked, she erupts in flame, her gray lenses disintegrate, and her green-gold eyes are revealed. Wes moves her into his cabin, telling her he has known all along.

That night, something tears one engine from the ship and melts the other. Nat glimpses a massive horned shape in the darkness. Adrift, the crew rigs a sail. Nat shows Wes the Anaximander stone, and he declines to take it. They rescue survivors from a sinking ship: Brendon and Roark, two smallmen refugees who are a couple, and Liannan, a sylph from Vallonis who identifies the creature as a drakon, a protector of the Blue that has returned without its rider. When Daran shoots at Liannan, the drakon seizes him and hurls him into the sea. Zedric later flees with Farouk in a lifeboat but is killed by slavers, who press Farouk into service.

Using their innate "small magic," the smallmen catch fish thriving in the supposedly dead ocean, and Shakes and Liannan grow close. Two slaver ships then capture the group. Their captain is Avo Hubik, Wes's former army comrade. Nat, Wes, and Liannan are confined on Avo's ship; Shakes, Brendon, and Roark are locked aboard the second vessel. In captivity, Nat confesses to Wes that she was part of a military team that abducted children and believes she caused the fire that took Eliza. Wes stops her: Eliza started the fire herself, was marked and dangerous, and may still be alive.

When traders arrive to buy marked prisoners, Wes kisses Nat before she is taken for inspection. Liannan identifies the kiss as a protection spell powerful enough to restore Nat's gray-eye disguise through the slavers' iron collar, and the traders reject her as unmarked. However, the voice compels Nat to give the Anaximander stone to Avo.

During a prisoner transfer, Wes initiates an escape. Nat, embracing her power, shatters every iron shackle on every prisoner at once. Farouk frees Shakes, Brendon, and Roark, and they commandeer Alby. But Wes is seized by Avo, who orders him butchered. Trusting her love can protect Wes as his kiss protected her, Nat shoots him through the heart. Avo kicks his body overboard. The crew retrieves it, and Nat is devastated, believing the spell failed. The next morning, Wes sits up alive, the wound reduced to a scab. They embrace, only to learn the RSA's fleet has surrounded the island doorway to Arem.

Nat finally understands. The voice was always the drakon's. She and the creature are two halves of the same being, and she is a drakonrydder, a dragon rider pledged to protect Vallonis. Her true name is Anastasia Dekesthalias, meaning "Resurrection of the Flame, Heart of Dread." She gave Avo the stone to draw the entire fleet to one location. Nat calls the drakon from the deep, mounts its back, and together they devastate the fleet with blue drakonfire while Wes provides sniper cover. A missile pierces both rider and drakon, and they crash onto the island.

Wes carries Nat through a forest doorway into Vallonis. The land is warm, green, and alive. He revives her, and the rot that threatened her heals completely. But the drakon tells Nat she cannot leave: As the last drakonrydder, she must defend Vallonis. Wes cannot stay; he must return to find Eliza. Shakes, Liannan, Brendon, Roark, and Farouk all pledge to go with him. Tearfully, Nat tells Wes she loves him but must remain. She returns his remaining platinum chips, fulfilling their contract. Wes promises to come back. They share a final kiss, and Nat calls her drakon and flies into the Blue.