Published in 2024, On Wings of Blood is the first installment in the Bloodwing Academy romantasy series by Briar Boleyn. The story follows Medra Pendragon, a half-fae who mysteriously awakens in the vampire-ruled kingdom of Sangratha after dying in her own world. Her unique features mark her as the last of the dragon riders, a lineage thought to be extinct. She’s captured by the arrogant highblood prince, Blake Drakharrow, and forcibly bound to him by his powerful uncle, making her an unwilling student at the brutal Bloodwing Academy. There, she must navigate deadly rivalries and a forced betrothal while uncovering dark secrets about the highbloods’ power. The novel explores themes of Manufacturing History to Perpetuate Injustice, Free Will Versus an Imposed Fate, and The Moral Cost of Survival in a Brutal World.

Briar Boleyn is the romantasy pen name of Fenna Edgewood, a USA Today best-selling author of historical romance. On Wings of Blood is an example of the popular romantasy genre; its blend of a high-stakes academy setting, an enemies-to-lovers romance, and complex vampire lore align with the trends popularized by works like Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing.

This guide refers to the 2024 Briar Boleyn e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, antigay bias, gender discrimination, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Medra Pendragon awakens in a strange new world on a heap of corpses, having accepted her death after sacrificing herself in her own realm of Aercanum. A sniveling man named Barnabas spots Medra while inspecting the field of battle and tries to bite her. Barnabas is quickly killed by his “master,” a cold and arrogant highblood (vampire) prince named Blake Drakharrow. Blake recognizes Medra’s unusual features—vivid red hair and pointed ears—as the marks of a dragon rider, a lineage thought to be extinct. He captures her and takes her to the Black Keep, the heart of the vampire kingdom of Sangratha. There, Medra is presented before a court led by Blake’s uncle, the powerful Lord Viktor Drakharrow. Despite the absence of dragons for over a century, Viktor deems Medra’s bloodline a valuable asset and decides to keep her alive. He performs an ancient blood rite, magically binding Medra to Blake as his Second Betrothed Consort, to the fury of Blake’s first betrothed, Regan Pansera. As part of this new arrangement, Medra is forcibly enrolled in Bloodwing Academy, an elite institution for Sangratha’s future vampire rulers and their blightborn (mortal) servants.

Medra’s first days at Bloodwing are a nightmare orchestrated by a jealous Regan. Her class schedule is sabotaged, causing her to be publicly humiliated by Professor Hassan for tardiness in History of Sangratha. She’s tricked into angering Professor Rodriguez in Restoration class by questioning him on a painful family legacy involving healers and dragons. Regan’s schemes culminate in Medra being placed in an Advanced Weaponry class meant for senior vampires, where she’s goaded into a duel with Visha Vaidya, a fierce Drakharrow loyalist. Though Medra holds her own, Visha attacks her unfairly after the duel is over. The combat instructor, Professor Sankara, is impressed by Medra’s spirit and allows her to remain in the class. Medra’s torment continues when, during the headmaster’s school-wide address, Regan uses thrallweave—a form of mind control—to force Medra to climb a giant stone dragon statue, drawing ridicule. Medra finds solace in friendships with a kind blightborn warden, Florence Shen, and a dwarven student, Naveen Sharma. Seeing her as a target, Professor Rodriguez begins secretly training her in thrallguard, a magical defense against mind control. Medra also discovers a female voice in her mind: This is the soul of her mother, Orcades, a powerful warrior in Aercanum who died while giving birth to Medra. When Orcades’s soul witnessed Medra dying, she attached herself to Medra to save her, inadvertently forcing Medra into a new world. The act has left Orcades sharing Medra’s body; Medra must now look for a spell to remove the binding.

The tensions between Medra and the highbloods escalate when Medra and Florence attend a highblood bonfire party on the beach. A student named Kiernan from the rival House Avari uses thrallweave on Florence, attempting to make her walk into the fire. After Medra intervenes, Kiernan tries to feed from her. Blake suddenly appears and, enraged that someone is touching what he considers his, kills Kiernan by throwing him into the bonfire. Later, Medra discovers that Blake’s young “sister,” Aenia, is a feral child-vampire responsible for viciously attacking animals. Blake confesses that Aenia isn’t his sister but a blightborn girl he turned into a vampire to save her after his brother, Marcus, slaughtered her family; the flawed transformation left Aenia unstable, and this secret could get Blake executed. Medra’s perception of the highbloods is forever shattered when she secretly follows Blake to the Bloodmaid’s Sanctum and witnesses the Adoration Rite, a secret ritual where a blightborn woman is celebrated and then sacrificed to power a mass-coercion spell that keeps Sangratha’s mortal population docile. However, she decides to keep the knowledge of the rite a secret since Blake tells her that revealing it would endanger their friends. Medra finds that she’s attracted to Blake, yet she can’t comprehend how he accepts the exploitation of mortals in Sangratha. Meanwhile, to remove Orcades’s soul, Medra performs a “freeing” rite using a spell from a forbidden book, but Orcades gets trapped in her dagger instead. Medra is partly happy that her mother is still close to her but also knows that she wants an out from her confined existence.

Leading up to the Consort Games—a dangerous mandatory trial for all consorts—Blake gives Medra a vial of his blood, claiming that it will grant her a temporary advantage. She drinks it, unaware that it will also finalize their magical bond. The Games begin with Regan sabotaging Medra by bribing an official to heavily drug her. Visha, acting on secret orders from Blake, helps Medra overcome the first obstacle. In the island’s jungle, Regan ambushes Medra with two other consorts, Quinn and Gretchen. Empowered by Blake’s blood and her awakened rider instincts, Medra fights back ferociously, defeating the women but sparing their lives. For the final challenge, Medra learns that she must cooperate with Regan to survive. They enter a domed arena where they must fight two horrific spider-like monsters, which Medra recognizes as former Bloodwing students. She realizes with horror that one is her friend Naveen. A magical artifact used on Medra before the games, the Crown of Bone, forced her to subconsciously choose between Florence and Naveen to be sacrificed. Devastated, Medra mercifully kills the creature that was Naveen before saving Regan from the other monster.

In the aftermath, Blake and Medra are summoned to a disciplinary hearing. Blake publicly dissolves his betrothal to Regan, and when given the right to demand her execution for turning against Medra, he spares her life, resulting only in her expulsion from the academy. Overcome with a complicated mix of relief and desire, Medra meets Blake later that night in the Dragon Court. After a passionate kiss, he reveals the full consequence of feeding her his blood: Since their bond is now complete, Blake can only feed on Medra’s blood. Stunned by his manipulation, Medra resists, but Blake uses the power of their new bond to overwhelm her will. He sinks his fangs into her neck and begins to feed. The intensity of the feeding, combined with the words from the unbinding ritual that Medra had previously performed to expel Orcades, unleashes a wave of powerful magic. The ground shakes violently, and the black stone dragon statue of House Avari begins to crack and crumble.

From the shattered remains of the statue, a living black dragon, Nyxaris, emerges. Speaking to Medra through a telepathic link, Nyxaris reveals that her botched ritual inadvertently contained a resurrection component that freed his soul from its centuries-long stone imprisonment. He declares that while he’s grateful to her for freeing him, he’s no longer bound to House Avari and rejects Medra’s desperate attempt to perform the traditional rider-bonding ritual. With a deafening roar that echoes across the academy and the nearby city of Veilmar, Nyxaris launches into the sky and flies away, a free creature once more. In the ruined courtyard, Blake and Medra are left to face the consequences of what they have unleashed upon a world that has forgotten the terror and power of living dragons.