by CJ Holmes
Community rating: 4.7/5 from 3 ratings.
Their marriage could end their war—or destroy both kingdoms.
After a year of war leaves Vharos broken, Khlara has one way left to save her people: marry the man who conquered them. Taryn, King of Erelis, offers peace in exchange for her hand, and Khlara accepts knowing exactly what it will cost her. She arrives in his palace expecting captivity dressed as marriage, determined to give him the vows he demanded and nothing more.
Instead, she discovers that Taryn chose her for reasons that go far beyond ending their war.
Erelis is preparing for the Feast of the Dead, an ancient rite meant to strengthen the Veil separating the living from what waits beyond it. That Veil is beginning to fail. Creatures once confined to the shadows are appearing in the open, and Taryn is telling his court that his new wife possesses the power their kingdom needs to survive.
There is only one problem: Khlara has never been able to summon so much as a single bolt of lightning.
As she searches for the truth behind Erelis’s rites—and the real reason Taryn wanted her in Erelis—Khlara finds herself drawn closer to the husband she intended to despise. Their marriage may have begun as conquest, but desire complicates hatred, trust proves far more dangerous than either of them expected, and the secrets between them threaten to matter more than the armies still gathering beyond their borders.
Because something is waiting beyond the Veil, and if Khlara cannot discover what became of the power she was supposed to inherit, neither kingdom may survive what comes through.
For readers of The Bridge Kingdom, One Dark Window, and The Shadows Between Us, A Queen of Storms and Ruin is a fantasy romance of enemies forced into marriage, dangerous court politics, ancient magic, and a queen whose greatest weakness may never have been a weakness at all.
Genres: Dark Fantasy, Romance, Fantasy
Tropes: Court Intrigue, Frenemies to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Hidden Powers
ISBN: 9781917559133
416 pages
Published: 2027-01-12
Publisher: CJ Holmes Publishing