Mira Ashen survives by stealing the smallest sparks of other people’s souls, and every borrowed fragment brings her closer to forgetting who she is. Then she meets Cassian Reed, a man the city cannot read, bind, or measure, and for the first time her curse goes silent in someone’s presence. In Aurelis, where soul-marks decide whether a person can marry, testify, inherit, or even be trusted, Cassian is an impossible contradiction and Mira is exactly the kind of secret the Dominion wants exposed. Their strange safety with each other quickly becomes something far more dangerous. Cassian sees the woman beneath Mira’s hunger instead of the monster she fears becoming, while Mira recognizes the exhaustion behind his calm refusal to let institutions define him. But people are being found brutally drained of Soulglow, panic is spreading through the Ashen Quarter, and officials are eager to blame anyone whose soul does not fit the law. As the Dominion closes in, Mira must decide how much truth she can risk without turning Cassian into a cure, a weapon, or another life consumed by her need. Cassian has spent years resisting every oath meant to claim him, but protecting Mira may force him into the heart of a system built to erase exceptions. Their growing bond could expose the difference between corruption and survival, or give the city exactly what it needs to destroy them both. In a world that treats souls as evidence, can two people no law understands choose each other without becoming property of the truth they uncover?
Mira Ashen survives by stealing the smallest sparks of other people’s souls, and every borrowed fragment brings her closer to forgetting who she is. Then she meets Cassian Reed, a man the city cannot read, bind, or measure, and for the first time her curse goes silent in someone’s presence. In Au...