Royal Bastards

Being a bastard blows, and Tilla would know. Lord Kent of the Western Province loved her when she was small and set her aside the moment his trueborn children arrived. At sixteen she spends her days in the forgotten tunnels beneath the castle with her stablehand half-brother Jax, and her nights drinking with the servants.

When Princess Lyriana visits with her uncle the Royal Archmagus, she scandalises the hall by choosing to sit at the bastards' table. That night Tilla, Jax, the scholar Miles and the Zitochi warrior Zell take the sheltered princess out on an escapade — and see a brutal crime nobody intended them to witness.

Hunted across the Western Province, the five of them are suddenly the only thing standing between the kingdom and a civil war. First in Andrew Shvarts's Royal Bastards trilogy: a fast, funny, foul-mouthed YA fantasy narrated with real bite.