Stray Monsters (imPerfect Strays #1)

Some monsters have claws. Some have an open hand, a warm fire, and a very good reason.
Stolen by the fae and caged in the Winter Court for two centuries, Billy and eighteen others were trapped as children in appearance while cruelty aged everything else. Now the Faerie Queen is dead, the cage is open, and Billy has one purpose keep the survivors alive.

But the world beyond Faerie isn't the one they left. In the walled city of an alternate Geneva, magic decides who eats and who starves, and sword-carrying Defenders hunt the creatures that come down from the mountains. When Billy discovers he can reach through the seams of the world and pull weapons out of nothing, the Defenders' charismatic leader offers the strays everything they have never a home, a purpose, and the chance to bury a blade in the kind of monster that broke them.

Revenge is easy. Navigating one’s conscience is not.

The deeper Billy is drawn into the Defenders’ world, the more he realises the monsters he needs to fear are just as likely to wear a human face, and as fractures grow amongst the strays, he needs to decide if vengeance is worth losing everything he swore to protect.

The strays are out of their cage, but now they’re forced to discover that freedom comes at a cost.

STRAY MONSTERS is a standalone epic fantasy set in the world of the award-winning imPerfect Cathar series — start here, no prior reading required. For readers who love the stolen-children cruelty of Holly Black's The Folk of the Air, the damaged and distinctly-powered crew of Six of Crows, and the flipped-sympathy moral turn of Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Expect portal escape and found family, survivors of a cruel fae court, late-blooming magic, a charismatic mentor who should never have been trusted, a silenced heroine hiding devastating power, slow-burn friends-to-lovers, and a monster hunt where the hunters need watching.