The Vow of Ash
Maren Veylan has spent her life counting heartbeats, one steady pulse at a time, praying the ash sickness does not steal another child from her village. But when her spirited sister Lirien is promised to Caelan Ashrune of the Ashrune court, Maren is summoned from her quiet healer's cot to a realm of ash-forged towers and dangerous ambition. Heralded by Old Tessah's cryptic warnings and shadowed by the ruthless politics of Queen Iskara Ashrune and the calculating Lord Vasek Morren, Maren soon discovers the plague sweeping the land is no accident of nature. It is a weapon. Caught between loyalty to her sister, her duty to the dying, and an unwanted longing for the cold-eyed Caelan himself, Maren must rely on unlikely allies, the enigmatic Aelder Saren and the honorable Sorin Halden, to unravel the conspiracy before the ash claims everything. As rival queens mobilize for war and court loyalties fracture, she faces an impossible choice: keep her vow of silence and watch the realm burn, or speak the truth and betray the man she has begun to love. The ashes remember. And so must she.