Dance of Thieves – Mary E. Pearson

Kazi grew up on the streets as a thief – one of the very best. Good enough that she eventually caught the attention of the queen, who made her one of the Rahtan – her elite guards. Now, Kazi and some of the other Rahtan have been sent out of the kingdom to track one of its most wanted fugitives. (Turns out this series is set after another series – I gather you don’t need to know what happened there, but it does inform some of the whys of where we find our characters.)

Kazi ends up in Hell’s Mouth, which is ruled by the Ballenger family. What Kazi doesn’t know is that their leader has just died, and his son Jase is now the Patrei – the head of the family. The other kingdoms think the Ballengers are a bunch of savage warlords out on the fringes of the kingdoms, but they have a rich history of their own, tracing their ancestry to one of the leaders of the lasts of the Ancients. Kazi and Jase end up on their own in the desert (the hows of that are a part of the story), and naturally, they each find out that the other is far more than they appear.

I liked this book – you can see the romance coming a mile away, but the rest of the story is really well developed, and interesting. I will definitely track down the rest of this series. Things seems tied up in a fairly neat little bow at the end, but the author throws in one last chapter to let you know that everything is still totally up in the air.