Ashes and embers

For eighteen years, Ember Vance thought her chronic fever and internal furnace were just an unspecified medical anomaly. She spent her days working at a coffee shop, painting her nightmares, and drinking her mother's strange herbal teas to keep her "core in balance." But when a routine gallery night turns into a literal nightmare, the cage around Ember's true nature shatters.
Fleeing an impossible shadow monster in a Chicago alley, Ember bursts into a blinding white-gold fire, sprouting magnificent, phantom wings.
Suddenly, she is thrust into the Hearth-a subterranean fortress carved into the bones of the city, populated by the Pyre: a secret society of winged guardians who transform into phoenixes. There, she learns a devastating truth. She isn't ordinary. She is the last of a royal bloodline known as the Sun-Born, and the "medicine" her mother forced her to drink for years was actually a toxic suppressant meant to keep her hidden.
Now that her fire is unleashed, Ember is a walking beacon for Malakor, a genocidal rogue general who seeks to use her royal blood to tear open the legendary Sun-Gate and burn the human world to ash.
To survive, Ember must train under Captain Asher Cross-a fierce, battle-scarred warrior whose disciplined blue-white flame strikes a powerful, volatile connection with her own. As their magical fires lock into a rare, inescapable bond known as Resonance, the lines between duty, survival, and desire begin to blur.
With her human best friend targeted as a pawn, her mother captured, and a traitor lurking within the Garrison's own walls, Ember must quickly learn to master the furnace inside her. Can she learn to fly before the world goes up in flames?
A thrilling urban fantasy packed with lethal secrets, slow-burn tension, and an ancient war hidden beneath the streets of Chicago.