One week a year, for seven years, they've circled the thing neither would name. This year, the mountain finally makes them choose.
Meris Stillwater climbs the mountain every High Thaw to grind healing lenses for the pilgrims who bathe in Micaspring's famous waters, and every year she spends the week trying not to want more than her one honest week with the reclusive Warden who guards the spring. Her grandmother died this past midwinter. The family trade is folding without a second pair of hands. This might be the last High Thaw she ever climbs for — and it might also be the year she finally reads, in a wet mica shard held to the spring's own shimmer, that the dragon's pulse she's tracked for seven years has never been fainter, even as the Mending Waters' famous cures have never been more plentiful.Thoren Hallowell, Warden of the Springheart, has watched the same impossible mismatch in his own ledgers for three years without letting himself finish the thought — because finishing it means doubting Edrick Greave, the beloved Apothecary who taught him half of what he knows. What he and Meris uncover, together, is a private reserve of the mountain's truest water, sold to wealthy pilgrims at a premium while the dragon Ilyandra is quietly bled to keep it potent. It isn't age killing her. It's being bled, one ladle at a time, for profit.
When the evidence closes in, Greave doesn't reach for a hostage. He frames Meris herself, bars her from the mountain, and threatens to take away the one week a year she's ever let herself want anything for herself. She and Thoren have one chance to prove it at the Vigil, in front of the whole gathered court, where a healer's read of a liar's own breath in firelight might be the only evidence a hopeful, frightened crowd will believe.
Perfect for readers who love slow-burn romance, morally-grey fae lords, and a dragon who is a person, not a resource.
- 🔥 A slow-burn built on seven real years of history, not manufactured hostility
🐉 A "fading" dragon who isn't dying of age — she's being bled for profit
💧 A hidden-power heroine who reads truth and lies in heat-shimmer through wet glass
👑 A beloved Apothecary whose decades of trust hide a private-reserve fraud
💍 Standalone romantasy with a full, satisfying HEA
Full-length romantasy (55,000+ words). Standalone love story with a satisfying HEA. Intended for readers 18+.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Used availability for Sasha Leone's Micaspring