A CROWN OF IVY AND THORNS: A Dark Royal Romantasy Novel

She can feel the exact moment a covenant breaks. Three days ago, the most sacred seal in the empire shattered — and the only person who knows it is a disgraced oracle's daughter working an unlicensed translation table in a morning market. Saoirse val Mourne has survived seventeen years by staying invisible.

Now the empire has conscripted her as a living instrument of a binding ritual that could seal the Hollow Below — a dimensional membrane where unmade things fester, and a god-warlord has been imprisoned for five centuries. But the ritual requires a second soul: a willing blood-royal who can ward consecrated ground.

The only man who qualifies is Aldric val Sorath. Disowned prince. Warchief of the empire's exiled and discarded. The man who chose principle over his bloodline and has been paying the particular tax that exacts ever since. He has no loyalty to the crown. She represents everything the crown has taken from him.

And they have nine days before the breach tears wide and something far older than either of them rises through it. Nine days. A ritual neither of them has the complete documentation for. A magic system where every ward costs a fragment of memory and every compact demands genuine consent — which means the more their trust fractures, the more the sealing fails.

A secret Saoirse discovers in the ruins that could cost Aldric everything, and that she carries alone for too long, for reasons she is not yet ready to name. This is a story about two people who have spent years deciding that softness is a liability — and what happens when they become each other's most dangerous exception.

For fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses and From Blood and Ash, A Crown of Ivy and Thorns delivers a slow burn that keeps its promise: magnetic enemies-to-lovers tension, a richly built ancient empire unraveling at its divine foundations, and a romantic payoff earned chapter by chapter through honesty, sacrifice, and the particular courage of letting someone know you complet