What the Fire Keeps - J.F.O. Black

A treaty satisfies the court. Only fire and iron make it binding.

Syllia Theren has spent twenty-six years perfecting silence. As princess of Whisperwind Vale, composure isn't a virtue; it's survival. Because when her discipline fractures, the wind answers. And in the volatile courts of elven politics, a woman who can shift atmospheric pressure with her emotions isn't an asset. She's a weapon no one asked for.

Now she's been married to the orc heir of Scorched Ridge, sealed to a stranger through iron cuffs and a walk between fire pits, and deposited in a volcanic fortress where the air barely moves, and every crack in her control echoes off basalt walls.

Zarfu Varr didn't choose this marriage. He chose it over a war his people would win at a cost they'd spend twenty years recovering from. When he discovers what his treaty wife is hiding, he holds a secret that could shatter the Accord, destroy her standing, and hand his enemies the ammunition they've been hunting for.

He buries it instead. And the cost of that protection draws them both into something the treaty never accounted for.

As a mercenary army builds in the mountains between their nations and enemies on both sides maneuver to tear the Accord apart, the only alliance holding is the one neither of them planned.

Book One of The Blackspire Accord. Start reading today.