The Vault Between Spaces by Chawna Schroeder

Stand-alone novel

Summary:

Every legend must start somewhere…
 
No prisoner entering HopeWell ever leaves. Or so the stories go. But from the moment Oriel sets foot inside Anatroshka’s most formidable prison camp, the petite girl of fragile appearance rattles the long-held beliefs of commandant and prisoner alike.
 
With eyes that see beyond the surface and music that trails her everywhere, Oriel bows before neither threat nor punishment. The rebellious can be broken, the cowardly terrorized, the arrogant crushed. But what to do when defiance, fear, and arrogance are absent? Moreover, Oriel makes no attempt to hide her intention: to escape the inescapable HopeWell.
 
But when facades are stripped away and myths become clothed in flesh, what begins as a prison break soon morphs into a mission to prevent the invasion of evil itself.

Opening Lines:

She appeared out of nowhere.

One minute all was quiet at the country estate of the archeras, the high commander of Anatroshka. The next, an alarm in his private office tripped. When soldiers burst inside two minutes later, they found a young woman perched on the edge of the desk, swinging her legs as if she were waiting for them. Nothing had been removed from the office. Nothing was destroyed. The doors were still locked, the windows unbroken, and the safe untouched. Even stranger, the young woman didn’t bother to resist arrest. Yet when interrogated, she refused to answer a single question, leading the chief agent on the case to declare her a dangerous skolops and a member of the Underground.

Or so the story in her file went.