Mated to the Shadows
Book 1 of the Molten Crimson series
She smuggles molten Aether across the Veil. He rules the shadows she has to cross — and the Bastard King collects his debts in person.
In progress — a new chapter every Friday on Ream
The story
Senna is half human, half demon, and entirely done being told which half to apologise for. She runs molten Aether across the Veil — the most valuable and most illegal cargo in either world — because a smuggler with a foot in both is worth more than a citizen of either. She is very good at it. She is also, as of one badly chosen run, very much in debt to the wrong king.
Kade is the Bastard King of the Obsidian Ring: half vampire, the one heir the High Lord would rather had never been born, and the only sovereign in the Midnight Hollows whose shadow magic runs to absolute zero. Cold enough to stop a heart mid-beat. Cold enough, it turns out, to be the one thing that can hold molten Aether without burning.
He needs a smuggler who can cross the Veil. She needs a debt cleared before the Blood Cartel collects it out of her ribs. What neither of them planned on is the bond that catches between fire and absolute zero — or that the High Lord has been waiting a very long time for a reason to burn the Obsidian Ring to the ground.
The world
The Midnight Hollows are the old world beneath the new one: courts of vampires, werewolves, demons and worse, carved into territories that have been feuding since before humans learned to write it down. The Obsidian Ring is one of them, and Kade is the king nobody voted for.
The Waking Grid is the human world — cities, power lines, paperwork — running on an infrastructure that has no idea what it is built on top of.
The Veil divides them. Crossing it legally takes the High Lord's writ and a toll to the Pack Syndicate. Crossing it Senna's way takes nerve, a very good map, and a tolerance for cargo that melts through anything that isn't cold enough to hold it.
Standing in the way: the Pack Syndicate, who control what moves across the Veil and take a cut of every crossing; the Blood Cartel, who hold Senna's debt and price it in blood; and the High Lord, who controls both of them and has never forgiven Kade for existing.
Start reading
In progress — a new chapter every Friday on Ream