Smoke and Scar

When a celebrated fae war hero and the enemy soldier she's sworn to hate are forced to fight side-by-side in a deadly magical tournament, survival becomes the least complicated part of the problem.

Elyria Lightbreaker has spent years outrunning her own legend. Once the most feared warrior in Arcanis, she now carries her grief like armor—and her scars like a warning. The last thing she needs is to be conscripted into the Arcane Crucible, a brutal series of trials held every twenty-five years that dangles the promise of peace between humans and magical races like bait on a very lethal hook.

She needs a partner to survive. What she gets is him.

Charming, infuriatingly principled, and carrying a smile that belongs on a hero rather than an adversary, her assigned ally represents everything Elyria has spent her life fighting against. The Crucible doesn't care about old grudges, though—and neither does the dark magic seeping through its trials, twisting the competition into something far more sinister than a diplomatic gesture.

With ancient horrors lurking in the shadows of each challenge and impossible odds stacking against them at every turn, Elyria and her reluctant partner must decide what they're truly willing to sacrifice—and whether the wall she's built between hatred and something far more dangerous can survive the heat of everything closing in around them.

Some scars run deeper than flesh. Some fires refuse to go out.