She was hired to fix a broken ward. Instead, she exposed a power the crown tried to bury.
Maeryn Quenlar knows better than to touch noble magic.
Broken wards have owners. Owners have lawyers, guards, and the kind of outrage that turns poor girls into examples. But when her little brother’s medicine runs out, Maeryn takes the job anyway.
One dead ward. One forbidden gift. One mistake powerful enough to drag her into Ashveil.
At the academy, magic is ranked, controlled, and used to decide who matters. Maeryn has no crest, no sanction, and no place among the heirs who were born to power. Worse, the ash magic under her skin is supposed to be extinct.
Then Caedren Vaelisar, Ashveil’s golden heir, discovers that his starfire and Maeryn’s ash are bound together by something older than crown law.
He is everything she should distrust.
She is everything his family fears.
And beneath the academy’s polished trials, something ancient is waking.
Trial of Ash is Book One in The Ashveil Cycle, a dark fantasy academy romance filled with forbidden magic, deadly trials, sharp-tongued rivals, found family, and a slow-burn bond forged in ash and starfire.
