Ashveils and Ember Vows

by Elowen Hart

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters64,567 words4h 41m read~7h 10m listen

In the ruined east conservatory of the Ashen Palace, where ember vines curl through shattered crystal ribs and eclipse-dusk turns the ash-light the color of old wounds, Cael Dawnmere finds a folded ashveil on a frost-filmed bench. Its knotwork has been altered—just enough to reroute a spoken vow away from the throne, just enough to unmake everything he has spent years holding in place. He pockets it. He tells no one. He has survived the Glass Court this long by knowing which secrets to swallow.

Then Isara Vael walks through the wardline, and survival becomes considerably more complicated.

She is not the broken exile heir the crown ordered him to choreograph into submission. She is a border warden forged through winters Cael helped engineer, carrying ward-burn scars and a name for him she learned from famine ledgers. Their first words are a controlled war. Their rehearsals are a battlefield dressed in ash-kisses and ritual bows. And somewhere between the altered ashveil, a crown-sprung ember-marriage writ, and the Glass Court’s listening wards, they discover that neither of them can outmaneuver the throne alone.

Court IntrigueEnemies To LoversDark Romantasy