Aiko Rising

Two bodies. One survivor. No answers.

When Aiko Takahashi's parents are murdered in their own home, the world calls it a tragedy and moves on. Aiko can't. Nothing about it adds up — not the woman who appears from nowhere to take custody of her and her inheritance, not the man who comes to that house after dark, and not the coded document her mother left hidden for someone to find.

Her uncle Hiroto — a man with a gentle smile and a past drenched in blood — would raise her if the court would let him. It won't. So he teaches her in stolen hours what her scholar father never would: how to fight, how to move unseen, how to survive. She'll need all of it.

Because the further Aiko digs, the less any of it looks like grief. Her guardian has been writing letters about her for ten years. Her mother built something worth killing for and locked it with the only key she trusted — her daughter's blood. And powerful people want Aiko badly, though not one of them will say why.

By the last page she has a name for it. One letter long.

DEVASTATE is the first book in the Aiko Rising series.