They told her Vantreth iron never breaks. They never told her it bleeds.Cora Slake reads the truth of iron with her bare hands. It's a bell-founder's gift, and a dangerous one, because the finest iron in the world comes from Vantreth Hold, and when Cora was a girl she laid her palm on a Vantreth bar and felt it do something iron should never do. It grieved. Her mother made her swear never to say so again.
Now the Iron Concord has come to her debt-drowned village to collect a bride, and the test that chooses her is the one thing she was warned to fail: her hands read too true. To clear her family's debt and save her younger brother, Cora is wed to the Black Warden of Vantreth and locked into an iron gorget forged from fresh black scale.
Kesar Vantreth has been lord of the finest iron in the world for two hundred and thirty years. He believes the story he was raised inside: that the dragon beneath his mountain is ancient and dying, that the great collar is a mercy, that the iron is only what a dying thing sheds. He has never once laid his own hand on it to ask. His new wife can't stop feeling that it's warm.
Because the dragon is not dying. She is chained, and collared, and alive — and every celebrated bar of Vantreth iron is struck from her living body. The wedding rite that binds Cora is what keeps the dragon docile enough to be flayed, and every bride before her faded and died feeding it. To free the dragon, Cora will have to make a man who was raised to love that iron give it up: his power, his name, and the one boast his whole house was built on.
A full-length standalone fae-and-dragon romantasy with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Perfect for readers who love arranged-marriage dragon romance, morally grey fae lords, and burn-down-the-rotten-system fantasy.
Now the Iron Concord has come to her debt-drowned village to collect a bride, and the test that chooses her is the one thing she was warned to fail: her hands read too true. To clear her family's debt and save her younger brother, Cora is wed to the Black Warden of Vantreth and locked into an iron gorget forged from fresh black scale.
Kesar Vantreth has been lord of the finest iron in the world for two hundred and thirty years. He believes the story he was raised inside: that the dragon beneath his mountain is ancient and dying, that the great collar is a mercy, that the iron is only what a dying thing sheds. He has never once laid his own hand on it to ask. His new wife can't stop feeling that it's warm.
Because the dragon is not dying. She is chained, and collared, and alive — and every celebrated bar of Vantreth iron is struck from her living body. The wedding rite that binds Cora is what keeps the dragon docile enough to be flayed, and every bride before her faded and died feeding it. To free the dragon, Cora will have to make a man who was raised to love that iron give it up: his power, his name, and the one boast his whole house was built on.
A full-length standalone fae-and-dragon romantasy with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Perfect for readers who love arranged-marriage dragon romance, morally grey fae lords, and burn-down-the-rotten-system fantasy.
- 🐉 Arranged marriage to a centuries-old, war-scarred fae lord
🔥 Enemies-to-lovers inside a real marriage, slow burn to open-door spice
⛓�� A chained dragon who is a person, not a prize
🖐️ A heroine whose hidden gift no one has ever believed — until her hands won't stay quiet
👑 Standalone. Full HEA. No cliffhanger.
Full-length standalone romantasy (58,000+ words). Explicit content; intended for readers 18+.
Genre: Fantasy
Used availability for Sasha Leone's Ironbride