SOLVED. YA Fantasy series. The heroine is named Kai, she lives in a fictive world and got separated from her family to be sold as a slave or work as a servant. Spoilers.

[Solar]

Hi, thanks a lot for that group!

I am looking for a book series that is at least two volumes long, but maybe more. I read the books when I was a child and I re-read them as a pre-teen so between 2003 and 2008. I have to say they were more intended for teenagers, I think, I was copying my big sister. I read the books in French but I am quite sure they were translated. They were not long, pocket books.

The main protagonist is a teenage girl, I believe she is aged 15 at the start and her name is Kai. Kai is not very pretty, she is quite petite, she has ash-blond hair and dark eyes, she ususally wears black. She is very fierce and strong-minded.

I don't remember anything about the start of the book but I believe she was living in a sort-of pre-industrialised or minimalist or merely poor society with her parents and, I think, her twin brother. She got separated from her family for a reason I don't remember and arrived in a modern city, where she worked as a servant, maybe to infiltrate a rich family, and there and she hid her true identity with a fake name, but I have no idea why, even if that was pretty important. I think it is because that rich society attacked her native one and she was on the look for her family.

[spoiler]

In that rich family, there was the son who fell in love with her and I remember he was obsessed with her dark eyes and kept repeating her fake name in his head, but eh she was kind of there to kill him so it was not a good starter for a love story.

At some point a princess arrived in the story, she was really beautiful, with long golden hair and really rich. Kai despised her, she despised everyone from that rich city anyway. Then, there was an event, everybody was running away, Kai and the princess were together, the boy who was in love with her disappeared and we never heard of him any more.

The princess gets sick of being chased for her beauty, takes a knife and cuts her two cheeks and gets two big scars. Kai starts to respect her more.

Then Kai and the princess arrive in a desert where they are captured into as slaves into a new kind of society which is clannic. There are to be given as spouses to young men of this society, who fight each other in some competition to win them over. The first to win chooses one of the girls first, then the second, and so on. Kai is considered to be too petite and dark to make a good wife, so she is chosen by the fifth or something, whereas the princess, who is tall and well-proportionned, even is her face is scarred, is chosen by the big winner. I even remember a woman from the clan examined them to evaluate their breeding capacities and she took the princess's jaw in her hand to look at her teeth, like a horse, and said she was really healthy.

Then Kai and the princess escape during the wedding night and in the end they find her family (and even more people?) and they all go to a land that is considered as mythic but which is their last chance to live without being persecuted. The princess and Kai's brother get really close.

I'm sorry if some of the things I said are not true, I can't really remember a lkt of things from that book except from that poor boy who fell in love with fake name of a girl who secretly hates him, and the fact she was considered a poor breeder, but the scarred princess a good one.

I did a goodgle research first and the only connection I found was this desceiption by someone who cannot find a book title either:

It seems very similar to the nook I am looking for, only I have no memory of Kai being amnesic or having superpowers, so I am not sure. However, the wyverns race anecdote in a canyon rings a bell to me. I think that's what happened when Kai and the princess ran away from the desert tribe.

I thank everyone in advance who would like to help me!
Take care!

[Solar]

The link to the book description that reminds me of the one I've been looking for did not paste, here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthatboo...

[Becca]

It sounds a bit like the Wind on Fire trilogy (or in French, Le Vent de Feu) by William Nicolson. The first book is The Wind Singer (French edition: Les Secrets d'Aramanth) and in the second book, Slaves of the Mastery (French: Les Esclaves de la seigneurie), there's a princess called Sisi whose cheeks are cut, but I think someone does it to her rather than her doing it to herself.

[Solar]

OMG THANK YOU

[Solar]

I was super hesitant about her cutting herself indeed, but I am sure she sorta embraced it!

[Solar]

I said her name is Kai bit it is Kestrel lol my imagination ran wild. I was really young when I read it!