A Crown of Ink and Ash

About this book

A scholar-princess is married off to end a war, to the enemy commander her people call the Butcher. In his frozen fortress she finds what he really writes at night, and the two of them begin a secret resistance behind a public show of hatred. A romantasy.

She was traded to a monster. But the monster writes poetry about peace.

Zosia Vaitkus, a scholar-princess of Aethelgard, is handed over like a treaty clause to end a border war — married to Valter Ozols, the Butcher of the North, a man whose cruelty is carved into her people’s scars. Trapped in the frozen fortress of Ironspire, she braces for silence, misery, and a husband who lives up to his name.

Then she finds the manuscript hidden in his study. Not battle plans. Poetry. Desperate, private pleas for peace. The Butcher is a mask — one Valter wears to shield his people from the Shadow King, a force draining the world’s runic magic dry. To survive, Zosia and Valter must perform icy hatred in public for the spies watching, and build a resistance in secret, fusing her scholarly precision with his raw power. But the closer they work, the harder the lie becomes — and the more dangerous the truth between them.

When the Shadow King orders Valter to extinguish Aethelgard’s light, the couple must choose: obey and survive, or ignite a civil war and risk everything they’ve just begun to love.

Book 1 in the Ironspire Saga series. Each book can be read as a standalone.

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