The Kiss of Ash and Blood
(2026)(The first book in the Death-Kissed Saga series)
A novel by Charles Eugene Anderson
One word, written in a familiar hand: Lovely.
That was all the warning Pardon Starshield needed. Ralnor was coming. She chose the green dress. She drew the bath. She imagined his hands on her face, the way he touched her when he thought she was asleep — slow, barely there, as if memorizing her.
He never made it through the door.
When a Ranger is murdered outside the gates of Snowfort, Pardon follows the killers' trail into the frozen mountains. But the tracks don't lead where she expects. The orcs who fired the arrow were sent. The woman weeping over the body had reason to want him dead. And the secrets Ralnor kept — about a child, a conspiracy, and a love he never spoke of — threaten to destroy everything Pardon thought she knew about the man she lost.
Armed with Lifedrinker, an enchanted blade that answers to conviction rather than skill, Pardon must untangle a betrayal that reaches inside Snowfort's walls — before the fire that follows burns it all down.
The Kiss of Ash and Blood is an epic fantasy of love, loss, and the choices that define us — for readers who want the emotional intensity of romantasy with the sharp prose and moral complexity of literary fantasy.
Genre: Fantasy
That was all the warning Pardon Starshield needed. Ralnor was coming. She chose the green dress. She drew the bath. She imagined his hands on her face, the way he touched her when he thought she was asleep — slow, barely there, as if memorizing her.
He never made it through the door.
When a Ranger is murdered outside the gates of Snowfort, Pardon follows the killers' trail into the frozen mountains. But the tracks don't lead where she expects. The orcs who fired the arrow were sent. The woman weeping over the body had reason to want him dead. And the secrets Ralnor kept — about a child, a conspiracy, and a love he never spoke of — threaten to destroy everything Pardon thought she knew about the man she lost.
Armed with Lifedrinker, an enchanted blade that answers to conviction rather than skill, Pardon must untangle a betrayal that reaches inside Snowfort's walls — before the fire that follows burns it all down.
The Kiss of Ash and Blood is an epic fantasy of love, loss, and the choices that define us — for readers who want the emotional intensity of romantasy with the sharp prose and moral complexity of literary fantasy.
Genre: Fantasy
Used availability for Charles Eugene Anderson's The Kiss of Ash and Blood