A Court of Ash and Midnight (Ash and Midnight, #1)

A court of mysteries and deception…enemies seeking her at every turn…and the most dangerous of them all, the man she can’t manage to stay away from, even if it means her doom.

Twenty-two-year-old orphan Embyr has spent her whole life trying to survive and stay off the streets. She manages to go unnoticed as a blacksmith’s apprentice, until the day she’s hunted through the woods by a band of cloaked figures.
Things take an even stranger turn when she’s rescued and taken to a castle hidden in the mountains, which serves as the headquarters of the Shadow Guardians, a guild of warriors that protect the realm.

But as Embyr learns more about her new home, she soon begins to wonder if she’s really been rescued, or if something more sinister is at play. It seems she’s the pawn in a deadly play for power, and inside the walls of the castle, it’s impossible to know who’s a friend and who’s an enemy.

And then there’s Daemon, the dark loner who everyone warns her to stay away from. He’s clearly dangerous and most definitely her enemy, and his reasons for being there are even more mysterious than Embyr’s. But try as she might, fate keeps drawing them closer, and he awakens something in Embyr that she never knew was there… something that might just prove deadly to them all.

From the author of the bestsellers House of Gilded Nightmares and City of Night comes the next tale in the connected Crowns of Aureon series. A COURT OF ASH AND MIDNIGHT is an enemies-to-lovers romantasy, slow burn building to delicious spice with a morally gray, burn-the-world love interest. It’s the first in a series.