Never the Roses

The most feared sorceress in the world has one weakness—and it belongs to her greatest enemy.

After centuries of fighting wars she always wins, the Dread Sorceress Oneira is done. She retreats to a remote sanctuary where forest meets the sea, trading battlefields for solitude and hard-won peace. It should be enough. It almost is—until one reckless, irresistible curiosity refuses to let her rest.

The most extensive library in existence doesn't belong to a king or a god. It belongs to Stearanos, her most formidable rival, a sorcerer whose power matches her own in ways that have always unsettled her. Oneira tells herself it's purely academic, this need to walk his halls and run her fingers along his shelves. One visit. No consequences.

She should know better.

In this lush romantasy debut, Jennifer K. Lambert builds a world of staggering magical scale and then strips it down to something achingly intimate—two impossibly powerful beings circling each other across a lifetime of rivalry, neither willing to admit what's been simmering beneath their conflict all along. Oneira and Stearanos share a history written in opposition, in power, in the careful art of never getting too close. But libraries have a way of revealing secrets, and solitude has a way of making old enemies look entirely different.

Forbidden. Intoxicating. Inevitable.

If you've been searching for a fantasy romance with genuine wit, slow-burn tension, and a heroine who could level kingdoms—*Never the Roses* is exactly what you've been waiting for.