Taxes of Steam and Silk

by Ellis Carrington

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters28,657 words2h 5m read~3h 11m listen

The lesser-house bathhouse is supposed to be empty after the last bell. Imani Whitaker knows every shadow of it by now—the cooling steam, the bribe-heavy ledgers tucked behind marble panels, the quiet corruption she has spent years documenting with steady hands and a spotless name. She expects forged accounts. She does not expect a bloodied hunting falcon collapsed at the cold pool’s edge, its jesses knotted around a signet ring bearing the crest of House Hale.

When she lifts the wounded bird toward the fogged ward-pane above, a spiderweb crack explodes through the glass and ember-lit script blazes to life—her name, bound beneath a forbidden fiscal invocation to Beck Hale, the bitterest rival heir in the Glass Court. Dawn’s eclipse audit will read every letter of it. In the Ashen Palace, an unsanctioned cross-house bond is not scandal. It is treason.

To survive, Imani must do the one thing her careful life has never permitted: trust an enemy. Beck Hale is sharp-tongued, reckless, and furious in ways she has only read about in arrears reports. He has his own plans for the cracked pane—plans that go far beyond erasure. And the longer they work side by side in steam and shadow, the more dangerous he becomes.

Court IntrigueEnemies To LoversDark Romantasy