daisyvalewrites
She holds the last living language in her throat.
He was paid to silence it.
Neither expected to be undone by the other.
When the Bureau of Linguistic Compliance arrests Seren Vale - one of the last Keepers of a forbidden constructed language - they assign Commander Cael Draveth to break her silence. He has ten days to extract the names of the surviving speakers. She has no intention of giving them.
What neither of them planned for: he starts writing down her words. In a private notebook. At midnight. Because he cannot stop thinking about them.
The Tongue of Ash is a slow burn enemies-to-lovers romantasy set in a dying empire where language is political, silence is survival, and falling in love happens one vocabulary word at a time. Features a complete constructed language - Vel'anthari - with its own grammar, tonal registers, and a glossary that grows with the story.
⟡ Enemies to lovers
⟡ Forbidden language / constructed language
⟡ Historical fantasy setting
⟡ Slow burn (they don't touch until Chapter 8)
⟡ Dual POV from Chapter 11
⟡ No explicit content
⟡ Complete story - updates every [day]
"The romance is not what happens between them. It is the language they build to describe what is happening."
Chapters 1-12 available here. The complete edition including the final three chapters and the full Vel'anthari Language Bible available on Gumroad