The Games of Gilded Sweetness: Confectionary Trials BOOK ONE

Every game promises a prize. In Candlegilt, the cost may be who you are.Seventeen-year-old Rielle Ashford has never had much room for wonder.Her world is overdue bills, an exhausted mother, an eleven-year-old brother she would do anything to protect, and the quiet responsibility of holding together a life that always seems one disaster away from falling apart.Then a strange glowing Token appears in the snow outside her house.It opens a door.And Rielle makes the one choice her careful life has never prepared her to make.She steps through.On the other side waits Candlegilt-a breathtaking realm of sugarglass roads, floating lanterns, syrup rivers, impossible creatures, glittering cities, and magic beautiful enough to make her forget she ever wanted to go home.Almost.Because Candlegilt is built around the Games.Players compete. Audiences cheer. Tokens grant extraordinary power.But every gift takes something in return.A memory. A truth. A piece of yourself you may not realize is missing until it is gone.And Rielle's Token is different.Wild.Forbidden.The kind of magic the Board has spent generations trying to control.The kind carried by someone the old stories called a Braider.With the guarded Cael Rook beside her, the wonderfully reckless Juni refusing to let terror have the last word, and an unlikely band of Players beginning to question everything they have been taught, Rielle discovers that winning may be the most dangerous thing anyone can do.Because the Games were never designed to reward the Players.They were designed to keep them playing.To get home to the family she refuses to abandon, Rielle must survive magical trials that turn longing into bait, learn why the Realms chose her, and uncover the truth hidden beneath Candlegilt's perfect smile.But the deeper she travels, the more dangerous the question becomes: What if the only way out isn't to win the Games...but to change the rules for everyone?The Games of Gilded Sweetness is an immersive young adult fantasy adventure filled with dangerous magic, breathtaking realms, strange and beautiful creatures, found family, slow-burning romance, rebellion, and the terrifying freedom of discovering that your life was never meant to be someone else's game.The Confectionary Trials begins here.