She has exactly one thing left that was never for sale.
Everyone who's ever wanted something from Vanya has found her price. Sennik is the first person who's never gone looking for it.
Undercover in the free-trade city of Tollgate to trace a purged registry and the fortune it's hiding, Advisor Vanya Zinfaren has one rule that's kept her alive for years: never be known. Then a soft-spoken records archivist reads her legend in four minutes flat. He asks for nothing in return.
Sennik has spent nearly a decade making himself small enough that nobody asks what he's capable of. Vanya is the first person who's ever asked him what he wants and meant it. As the trail she's chasing widens into a conspiracy reaching straight for the Vale's own throne, the two of them build the one rule neither of their trades ever allowed: nothing decided for the other person, ever, without asking first.
Then someone offers Vanya everything she's ever wanted: safety, standing, a name that finally means something, for the one price she refuses to pay. The city that taught her silence has a cost is about to teach her what love costs when nobody's keeping score.
Book 4 of The Blackspire Accord. Best enjoyed after What the Fire Keeps, What the Wind Reveals, and What the Storm Forges, though this arc stands complete on its own, with a hard-won HEA.
Tropes:
- Hidden identity
- Forced proximity
- Slow burn
- He always asks first
- Found family
- Heat: 4 chillis, open door
