ASHBORN

Book One of the Scorched Crowns Duet:

Vidya Hale was never meant to survive.

Raised on a bleeding border where fire comes more often than mercy, she learns early that survival isn't heroic---it's cruel. When everything she has is taken in a single night, Vidya expects to die with the ashes.

She doesn't.
Something answers her instead.

Her survival does not go unnoticed. Eyes turn. Doors open. Curiosity sharpens into something more deliberate, and mercy begins to take unfamiliar shapes.

Kael Covalin, the crowned Prince of Maevryn, is sent to contain her. Bound to a raven that sees fractured futures, Kael knows Vidya's existence presses against something fragile; an imbalance the kingdoms would rather measure than confront.

Vidya does not seek a crowned prophecy.
She seeks only to endure what is asked of her.
But endurance, in a world built on control, has consequences,

and not all of them can be survived unchanged.