The year is 1889. Jesse McCall is a cowboy, running from his past after a bounty was placed on his head for a murder he had no part in. While traveling, Jesse picks up Truth, a small town preacher literally beaten down after standing up to the sheriff. With no where left to turn, the two of them travel north, out towards Utah and away from any danger that might follow them. But Jesse underestimates just how bad people want Truth dead, how harsh the desert can be, and how much his and the preacher's relationship would change on their journey.

To the world he is the Godslayer, the beast who devoured gods and razed kingdoms. To himself he is only Bane, a dragon betrayed and entombed by the man he trusted most: his own rider. Now, centuries later, Bane is dragged back into a mortal shell and bound to a king's command to fight another war. But the rider who once caged him offers a bargain: survive four trials, and be restored to his true form. Freedom, redemption, even love, all whispered on the serpent's tongue. To follow him is to embrace the hate they share, and the ruin it promises. Yet hate runs close to love, and love close to madness. Every trial drags old sins into the light and knots their bond tighter with blood and memory. Together they could unmake empires, or unmake each other first.

Evie von Stein exists between two worlds. Some days, she's Evangeline, the perfectly polished daughter of a powerful family, bound to a legacy of expectations she never asked for. But away from gilded halls and carefully curated reputations, she's just Evie: a chaotic engineer in a cramped apartment, finding solace in secondhand coffee mugs, and the soft, unexpected comfort of the people she's let into her real life. Especially him-her intense, guarded neighbor whose presence unnerves and steadies her in equal measure. But when old loyalties and hidden truths begin to surface, she's forced to confront a much harder question: Can she expose the truth and bring a system to its knees-without destroying the only people who still believe in her?