The Ash Court Bride

They sent a bride to sign a treaty nobody could read. She read it.

For two hundred years the Ember Treaty has held the Emberline: a border of black glass between frostbound Velreth and the burning courts of Pyr. Every generation it is sealed the same way, with a marriage and a rite so old that nobody living can read it.

Sabelle Venn can read it.

Daughter of a diplomat branded traitor when she was eleven, she is the only ward-reader in three generations who can parse the binding language itself. So the Sovereign sends her across the bridge to marry Kaevis Dain, second prince of Pyr, the spare son legitimised because the elder brother was judged unsuited.

Velreth gets its trade road. Pyr gets a shaky succession made respectable. Sabelle gets a court that ashes black flowers at her feet and calls it a welcome.

The rite is supposed to be dead ceremony. Sabelle wakes it - and the tether it makes between her and Kaevis is real, and it can be seen.

Prince Halix has been waiting two hundred years for someone to read that treaty aloud. He simply expected to choose who.

THE EMBER TREATY BEGINS HERE.

Readers who love this will find:

• An arranged marriage between a political hostage and the prince who never wanted the throne
• Enemies-to-lovers built on a magical bond neither of them can hide
• A rival heir playing a two-hundred-year game
• Court intrigue, contract magic, and a border that runs through the middle of everything
• A slow burn with a full arc and no cliffhanger ending

The Ash Court Bride is Book One of The Ember Treaty, complete in four parts: The Binding, The Forging, The Spending and The Turning. The series continues in The Reader Who Didn't Come Back.