Every generation, the mountain crumbles a little more, and every generation, a rite is staged to buy it a few more years. She's the first mason honest enough to ask what's actually being cut.
Riona Sollis reads stone the way other people read faces: a lie ticks under her palm like a hairline fracture, a hard truth settles dead solid. Conscripted under the ancient Quarry Accord into the Warden's household days before the next Bonding Rite, she's sent to certify a failing wall deep in Slatespire's sealed foundation. What she finds instead is the Spire-Warden's heir, alone, breaking his own steward's standing order to look for a truth he's never been allowed to go looking for — and a wall that goes stiller under both their hands together than she has ever once felt stone go alone.Ravic Wrackstone has spent eleven years believing his own inadequacy caused the first Bonding Rite to fail. He's about to find out the rite was never about blood, and the "price" his court has paid for generations was never a price at all.
To break the curse, and free the dragon quarried out from under an entire mountain court, Riona and Ravic have to do the one thing no rite has ever managed: choose each other freely, in front of everyone, with nothing held back.
Perfect for readers who love forced-proximity romance, morally-grey fae lords, and a dragon who is a person, not a resource.
- ⛰�� A curse-breaker romance where the "price" everyone accepts turns out to be a theft in better clothing
🐉 A dragon quarried, piece by piece, for centuries, mistaken by his own court for a mountain
✋ A hidden-power heroine who reads truth and lies through her own hands against stone
👑 A beloved Castellan whose whole authority rests on a crisis he's kept alive on purpose
💍 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: Fantasy
Used availability for Sasha Leone's Slatespire