A Kiss Before the Crown

by Elowen Hart

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters29,349 words2h 8m read~3h 16m listen

The winter masque is ending. The ash is watching. And somewhere in the Ashen Palace glassworks, a stolen identity is about to condemn them both.

Maren Lang has kept the palace ledgers in perfect, bloodless order—because she knows what happens when a quill slips. One altered entry. One name signed in the wrong place. One man dead at the Glass Court rail. She has spent years atoning in silence, and she will not make that mistake again. Then a half-melted masque drinks her blood on the counting table and flickers with a name that isn’t hers: Stellan Ghent, exile captain, war-scarred and infamous, a man the Ashborn nobility call a monster and mean it as a compliment.

When guards drag Stellan into her gallery in shackles, he is certain Maren’s quill is the weapon aimed at his throat. She is certain he is the court’s newest trap. They are both wrong. Someone wore his masque on the Glass Court balcony and sealed a lethal marriage-compact in his name—one that ensnares Maren’s lesser house as guarantor and leaves them locked together in the glassworks while ash-judgment looms at sunrise.

Court IntrigueEnemies To LoversDark RomantasyArranged Marriage