Verithrya Soleis

The only daughter of Paden City’s foremost researcher and genius innovator, her own brilliance is secondary to devotion for her first love. Will first love or its loss be the defining feature of her young life?

Verithrya Soleis wished for nothing more than to marry the childhood friend she spent most of her life pining after. Her life's most dramatic agony hinges on whether or not Oren Thrynn loves her as much as she loves him. Just when it seems that all her fondest wishes are about to come true, every facet of her carefully curated life begins to unravel simultaneously. With her father assassinated in broad daylight and Oren's mysterious disappearance, she's left to discover her own inner strength without them.

Verithrya Soleis grapples with the sudden disappearance of her betrothed, Oren, and the assassination of her father, Councilor Nolan Soleis. Guided by a posthumous letter from her father, she unlocks his private laboratory and discovers his hidden research into a deadly plague ravaging the City's prillan population, as well as his illicit ties to the Cloud District cartels. To prepare to take her father's place on the City Council, she undergoes rigorous political and social training under the enigmatic Dowager Palestreya Thrynn, learning to master her emotions, read people, and use perception as her armor. Putting these new skills to use, Verithrya leverages the affections of her father's suspected killer, Jossorin Varik, tricking him into granting her access to his clandestine operation known as the Artifice. Disguising herself to journey into the Cloud District, she successfully infiltrates the secret facility, assumes command of its researchers, and bravely steps outside the City's protective dome into the dark wasteland. There, she collects soil and biological samples, deducing that pests called "nits" are responsible for spreading the prillan disease, and ultimately joins the Artifice to pursue a cure.

Verithrya dedicates herself to finding a cure for the deadly prillan malady, which Dowager Palestreya Thrynn reveals is actually an ancient, manufactured plague known as the Ashblight or Withering. Working alongside researchers Ted and Dashya in the Cloud District, Verithrya uses her late father's magnifier to isolate the jagged, foreign cell causing the infection. While trying to balance her secret research with her ambition to claim her father's seat on the City Council, she is forced to grapple with her mother's public arrest due to a dust addiction. During another excursion into the Cloud District, Verithrya is caught in a violent riot orchestrated by Jossorin Varik and is kidnapped by a tattooed thug. She awakens to find herself under the unexpected protection of Dowager Thrynn, who encourages her to continue her search for a cure. There, she is reunited with a captive Jossorin, whom she brings back to her Artifice lab under a truce with the Borni cartel. After testing his blood against the pathogen beneath her magnifier, Verithrya makes a groundbreaking discovery: Jossorin's blood easily defeats the infected cells, revealing that he is the cure