Awakened

She thought she was studying ancient myths. She didn't know she was one.Layla Ashraf is a PhD student in Cairo - fluent in dead languages, good at ignoring things she can't explain. Like the fire she's been feeling beneath her ribs for three weeks.Then a stranger on the metro looks at her like she's a problem he already knows the answer to. By nightfall, everything she thought she knew about history, magic, and herself has been stripped down to ash.Beneath Cairo's streets exists a hidden city called Al-Asfal - a world of Guardians, dragons, and a war no one on the surface knows is coming. Layla's bond is to a dragon carrying the rarest element in existence, one extinct for five hundred years.Everyone wants to control it. Some want to destroy it. And then there's Ziad - her cold, infuriating, devastatingly competent trainer - who keeps his distance like it costs him something.The fire has been waiting five hundred years to wake up. So has she.