billxmaggie
A world of frozen magic. A man made of starlight and ice. And the one girl from New Jersey who can break his heart.
Eighteen-year-old Clara is a "scrap-metal girl." Raised in an orphanage within earshot of the Atlantic waves, she's survived a life of hard knocks and foster homes with nothing but her best friend, Lily, and a stubborn refusal to break. But when a violet rift tears through the sky, Clara is dragged from the Jersey Shore into Aethelgard-a realm of floating moonstone spires and ancient celestial laws.
Enter Merlin, the Architect of Aethelgard. Cold, breathtakingly beautiful, and possessing a power that commands the very stars, he views Clara as a "catastrophe"-a human variable that threatens the perfect, icy design of his world. He wants her contained. He wants her quiet.
But Clara isn't just a stray from another dimension. She is the Star-Anchor, a living bridge between worlds, and the only soul who can ground the flickering magic of Aethelgard.
As Merlin's crystalline exterior begins to melt under the heat of Clara's defiance, a dangerous, breathless romance begins to burn. Clara finds herself falling for the man who is both her protector and her jailer-a man whose touch is a lethal frost but whose eyes promise a galaxy of devotion. Even as the charming but predatory dragon-shifter Vane tries to lure her away, Clara's heart is drawn deeper into Merlin's shadow.
When Clara discovers that her presence in the Spire wasn't an accident-and that her mother's secrets are buried in the foundations of Merlin's palace-she must decide where she belongs. Can she love an immortal who would sacrifice her freedom to keep her safe? Or will the girl from the boardwalk find a way to rewrite the laws of magic to save the man she loves?
In the Spire, silence is survival. But for Merlin and Clara, love is the loudest sound of all.