Alliance (Adams)

Ever since a devastating magical war tore apart Ada Fletcher's homeworld, she and her family have lived undercover on the low-magic Earth. Stuck in a dead-end job in London, Ada has spent her life hiding both her true identity and her forbidden magic. At least until she's captured by the Inter-World Alliance as a suspect for a deadly magical murder she had nothing to do with. Kay Walker, grandson of the Inter-World Alliance's late founder, expects to spend his first week as an Alliance employee hunting rogue monsters, not solving his supervisor's murder or questioning a strange, fierce young woman with dangerous magic. Killer or not, her abilities raise questions about the Alliance's history, and the closer he gets to the truth, the higher the body count rises. The last thing Ada wants to do is help the infuriating Alliance guard who arrested her, but it soon becomes clear that the Alliance knows too much about Ada's homeworld -- and her magic. More, in fact, than she knows herself. One thing's certain: she's not the only one keeping secrets, and trusting the wrong person might cost more than her life.​

It's hard to defend the Earth from deadly monsters when you suspect you might be one of them. Discovering she's a walking magical weapon is just the beginning of Ada's problems. Her guardian thinks she's turned traitor, and her new boss at the Inter-World Alliance has put her on goblin-catching duty. With her family's livelihoods at stake, Ada must cooperate with the Alliance despite their obvious interest in exploiting her magical talent. Kay, meanwhile, is thrown into the middle of political turmoil on a world split between humans and centaurs, as the centaur king's murder threatens to trigger a war with their magic-wielding human neighbours. To prevent a bloodbath reaching Earth's doorstep, Kay must help Markos find the real killer -- and learn more about his own unpredictable magic in the process. But doing so risks putting Ada in even more danger. Against an enemy they quite literally can't see, Ada and Kay must face up to the real, deadly potential of magic…

When Earth suddenly gains inexplicably high levels of magic, all fingers point at the Alliance. With griffins and unicorns running amok around London and dangerous monsters escaping from the Passages, Ada and Kay are sent to seek out the source of the trouble. On a distant world, where magic-fuelled forces of nature rule over humans, a disaster is sweeping the land. When Kay and Ada travel there with the other Ambassadors, they encounter a terrifying force of nature tied to their own magic in ways they never expected. Worse, the rising magic level sends their own abilities haywire. While Ada barely has a handle on the magic she still fears, Kay becomes more reckless than ever when testing the boundaries of his own abilities. Faced with living magic, their mission turns into a fight for survival -- and the future of the Multiverse.

Ada is gone, taken by a group of magic-resistant warriors with a grudge against the Alliance. Kay is stranded on Earth, with no way to reach her. But he won't accept that Ada is lost. Ada refuses to resign herself to her fate as a weapon of the Stoneskins. Tapping into her own magic might be her key to escape, but now she's in an unknown world, far beyond the reach of the Alliance. And the terrifying StoneKing has his eye on her -- and her magic -- for reasons she never could have seen coming. Kay puts his job, and his life, on the line to get to Ada. But with powers shifting inside and outside the Alliance and an old enemy waiting in the shadows, the countdown to war has begun… and Ada is right at the centre.

Kay and Ada achieved the impossible and defeated the StoneKing, but only they know about the terrible dangers beyond the Alliance's borders - and within them. All Kay wanted was to escape the shadow of his father, Lawrence Walker, the former council member responsible for dooming Ada's homeworld to destruction. Now Walker is back, his plans more ruthless than ever, and the world he left behind might be the final catalyst for a cross-world war. Kay and Ada race against the clock to stop Walker and save a world from the deadly trap that cost Kay's mother her life. With the Alliance turning on itself and Ada's homeworld threatening war, Kay and Ada must overcome their most dangerous adversary yet before it tears the Multiverse apart.

With Earth on the brink of war with Ada's homeworld, the Alliance has reached crisis point. While Ada faces the truths her guardian, Nell, kept from her all her life, Kay faces the backlash from his father's last, terrible act as a council member. Nobody can be trusted, and betrayal lurks at every corner. As the inevitable cross-world war threatens everything they care about, Ada and Kay must make devastating choices. If the Alliance falls, so does the Multiverse. And this time, there's no going back…