A Crown of Ash and Iron

by Cora Brooks

Heat 4 / 5 · 21+Novella · 12 chapters29,643 words2h 9m read~3h 18m listen

Every dusk, Bound walks into the Veiled Market stall and lays her hands on the man who burned her world to cinders. The iron bowl. The stopped hourglass of drifting ash. The exile writ already signed in black wax and blood. She is a registered royal conduit, a crown-leashed weapon, and Cormac Torres is her latest assignment: the shadowbound rebel commander whose war-sigil once obliterated her coven, now shackled and rune-scored and furious—and bound to her by magic she did not choose.

The siphoning was supposed to be simple. Drain his power. Tame the weapon. Survive. But each ritual pulls her deeper into his battle-rage, his grief, his fractured memories of the night her coven burned—and what she finds there does not look like the atrocity she was told to hate. Meanwhile, the Ashen Court’s patience is not infinite. A matching exile writ waits with her name on it. The shadowbound rebels want Cormac unshackled and Bound bleeding the throne dry. And old gods cultists are circling the stall at dusk, whispering that the bond she and Cormac share was never meant for a crown.

Every faction has a use for her. Every faction is lying. And somewhere between forced proximity and lethal court betrayal, the hatred she swore to keep has begun to char at the edges—leaving something rawer, more dangerous, and far harder to survive.

Dark RomantasyEnemies To LoversMorally GreyCourt IntrigueChosen One