Dusk at the Exile Gate

by Ellis Carrington

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters28,647 words2h 5m read~3h 11m listen

Kaelen keeps her stall at the Veiled Market shuttered until darkness falls, selling charms pressed from ancient ward-dust that clings to warm skin like a second heartbeat. She asks no names and volunteers none of her own—especially not the one bound to a ruined exile house she helped destroy. It is a careful, solitary life, and it suits her perfectly. Until a blood-slick falconry ring spins across her counter, ignites her ward-dust into the flickering face of a stranger wearing a stolen name, and a slit courier pouch drops from the shadows bearing a bloodstained route map straight into the heart of the Ashen Palace.

She is not the only one who received it. When Kaelen storms the palace rookery, she finds Gideon Pereira—her bitterest rival, the Glass Court’s sharp-eyed falconer, and the last person she would choose to share a secret with—bent over an identical map that names her as his contact. Someone inside the Ashborn nobility is using a condemned exile heir’s identity as a weapon, and if that stolen face walks unmasked into the royal masque before midnight, every remaining exile house burns for it.

To stop it, Kaelen and Gideon must descend together into the flooded cellars beneath the Glass Court—narrow stone throats, waist-deep ash-clouded water, and traps keyed to oaths they both swore and both betrayed. The deeper they go, the harder it becomes to remember which of them she fears more: the rival at her shoulder, or the truth rising with the tide.

Court IntrigueEnemies To LoversDark Romantasy