Romantasy

The gates of Yukisa, the hidden Winter Court, only open to the outside world once every generation. Miya is a sharp-eyed bookkeeper who reads human debts, obligations, and lies as glowing ledger lines—a gift balanced by her absolute inability to lie. When her sister and mentor Hisa goes missing inside the frost-locked gates, Miya must secure a rare entry token to pull her out before the court seals for another thirty years. Inside is Sano, a high-ranking enforcer bound by the court's rigid laws, tasked with hunting down infiltrators. As Miya navigates a deadly rescue that exacts a heavier toll with every step, Sano follows her trail of exposed secrets and disrupted debts. Separated by the court’s vast rings but linked by the chaos Miya leaves behind, the two are solitary strategists on a collision course—living ledgers in a court that demands to be paid in blood.

At the apex of a lethal rivalry between two magical academies, a field medic without an aggressive spell to her name forces a precarious survival. For a century, the Academia de Ouro and the Instituto del Cobre have bred combatants destined to destroy each other, but this year, a mandated exchange forces their students into the same halls. Catalina has never leveled an opponent in a duel, but she has never let a patient bleed out on the floor, either. When she finds herself permanently bound in an enforcement pact with the deadly star of the rival academy, her only mandate is to keep him breathing—and keep herself from becoming collateral damage. But in halls where every glance is calculated and a medic's tools can be turned against her, staying neutral becomes the deadliest game of all.

Tamsin Fletcher has spent her life negotiating on behalf of the wagon-merchants and craft-halls, turning empty hands into temporary truces. She has never carried leverage of her own. When the reclusive Court of the Barrow-Mark unseals its borders to outsiders for the first time in a generation, Tamsin is sent to negotiate an end to a vicious proxy war bleeding the trade routes dry. But on the eve of a breakthrough, she is murdered—only to pry her eyes open exactly thirty days earlier, on the day the crossing opened.

Trapped in a closed stretch of time, Tamsin discovers she retains every secret she learns, but each repetition demands a physical toll from her strength. The proxy war she was sent to stop is being manipulated by a faceless director using the Barrow-Mark's shifting physical architecture: an ancient, subterranean mechanism of turning gears and kinetic locks known as the Brass Wheel. To break the cycle and claim unassailable leverage, Tamsin must forge a dangerous alliance with Vance Ironwright, the ruthless mercenary commander fighting on the wrong side of the proxy war. Together, they have exactly thirty days to map the physical puzzle of the Wheel, uncover the war's true architect, and stop the gears from locking the borders, and Tamsin's life, away forever.

Neshtaran Ovaldar fixes problems for a living — the kind her family's trade business can't put its name to. When the Vessaran Court opens its gates to outsiders for the first time in a generation, she's the one sent through them, with eight days to deliver a contract, collect payment, and get out again before the gate seals for another lifetime.

She doesn't plan on staying. She doesn't plan on falling for the court's grim, gorgeous Kindler, the man sworn to tend the rare light that keeps Vessaran's halls warm — and that is quietly, beautifully consuming every noble who touches it too long. She doesn't plan on discovering that her own brother's secrets are already inside the walls with her, or that the court's careful peace is built on a rot everyone has agreed not to see.

By the time the gate closes, Nesh has to decide what her family's loyalty is actually worth — and what she's willing to become to keep the people she loves, on both sides of the wall, from disappearing.

Danique Oosterkerk is the most wanted thief across the floating ziggurats of the Tri-Vault, famous for her daring roof-top escapes and complete lack of reverence for the gods. Joris van Veldt is the champion of the Dawn Shield: solemn, impossibly broad-shouldered, and sworn by sacred oath to bring her to the bronze cages. But when Danique scales the high sanctum to liberate the priceless Falcon-Aegis, Joris corners her just as traitorous cultists blow the temple’s keystone to dust. Falling together through the cloud-belts on a single kinetic grapple-stone, Joris saves her life—and Danique repays the favor by stealing his breath. Now branded fugitives together, they must dance across crumbling mountain plates, trading wicked parries and searing kisses while running from every soldier in the sky.

Deep in the impassable Parnassos Mountains lies Katerinia, a sanctuary city built for those who have nowhere else to flee. Its survival rests in the hands of its Lock-Ward, a woman who knows its subterranean gates and hidden paths better than anyone. When an early, catastrophic winter seals the pass, she finds herself trapped alongside the man who condemned her mentor to die. He claims he did it to preserve the sanctuary; she knows it was a calculated murder disguised as justice.

He holds the political authority and commands the upper city. She controls the keys and regulates what stays alive in the deepening dark. What begins as a bitter siege of mirrored sabotage and secret moves gradually binds them to the same desperate end. To keep Katerinia from plunging into chaos, they will have to rely on each other’s unique leverage. The line between sworn adversaries blurs under the pressure of isolation, shifting loyalty, and the lethal cold, driving them toward a climactic choice before the spring thaw brings reckoning from the outside world.

For three hundred years, the Housen Grounds have held back a withering, flesh-eating fog known as the Shigai. The only thing keeping it contained is a blood-bound occupancy: two descendants must live within its rotting walls every night, or the bounds break.

Kiyomi walked away from the Meisho Cordon’s military ranks rather than feed innocent lives to their war machine. Branded a coward and a deserter, she has nowhere left to run when she is dragged to the Housen Grounds to serve as a replacement occupant. There, she meets Naoto—a rigid, arrogant loyalist of the very Cordon she despises, sworn to uphold the rules even as the estate tries to kill them both.

Tethered together in a haunted manor, they have to survive the Shigai’s nightly horrors and fulfill the Cordon's impossible demands. But as Kiyomi begins to use her unsanctioned combat tactics to carve out a foothold in the estate, the two bitter rivals realize the curse isn't a natural disaster. The institution they are desperately holding together might be the very thing that wants them dead.

Zadeya Feraoui is a street-smart scavenger living on the frozen edges of the Qas Bani Court, making a meager living by surviving the ice. She possesses a rare gift: whenever she touches a shattered object, she sees exactly what it was and how it was used before it broke. When the once-in-a-generation Winter Gates open, drawing outsiders to the isolated citadel for a season of brutal trade and lethal politics, Zadeya is conscripted to assess the ruins of a collapsed tower. There, she uncovers the shattered fragments of a high-profile murder weapon—a blade that proves the court’s most infamous execution was a sham. Now caught in the crosshairs of the powerful factions who profited from the lie, she must forge an uneasy alliance with Talib, a relentless enforcer of the court. As they navigate deadly games and an intense, dangerous attraction, Zadeya’s ability to read the past becomes the only weapon that might shatter the entrenched conspiracy—or get them both killed.

Sailing across the singing glass dunes of Kauhale takes nerve, a swift skiff, and a healthy appreciation for danger. I had all three until Hinanui stepped into my path. She is an exiled goddess of mirages with a penchant for dramatic exits, razor-sharp wit, and impossible schemes. An usurper has taken her throne and deployed sonic war-engines that threaten to shatter our crystalline country into dust. She needs my sand-skiff to outrun the mechanical crawler fleet; I need her strange glass magic to keep us in one piece. But as we race under blazing twin moons, her clever illusions cannot hide the genuine passion blooming between us.

Captain Yasmina al-Ghazwani rules the sunlit shallows of Tissint, raiding imperial convoys with a wink and an agile twin-hulled catamaran. Commander Mazigh Boubara is her exact opposite: unyielding, honorable, and commanding the deadliest warship in the royal fleet. When Mazigh finally corners Yasmina amid the calcite reefs, their long-awaited showdown is shattered by a catastrophic beam of focused solar energy that threatens to burn their entire island kingdom to ash. Trapped within a blinding maze of hardened light bridges and deadly mirages, the pirate and the commander must combine their navigational genius to survive. Every sword-clash and close call draws them closer, turning a sworn enmity into a scorching romance on the high seas.

Master sail-trimmer Rong Kexin measures her life in sail-angles, wind-shear, and the clean kick of a calibrated matchlock. She has no room in her calculations for Yan Zhenyu, the swaggering corsair gunner she hauled out of a burning enemy brig. But when a magnetic storm strands their twin-keeled cutter in the void-shoals between worlds, survival demands total harmony. Their vessel runs on lodestone powder—an explosive art that demands flawless physical sync between helm and gun-deck. In the stifling heat of the powder room, every loaded charge heightens a dangerous, electric attraction. As imperial warships close in, Kexin and Zhenyu must yield to the intoxicating rhythm of each other's touch or let their worlds drift into fire.

Under the azure waters of Nyanza-Moyo, Folasade-Oma is an unstoppable warrior, using flash-frozen coral structures to shatter enemy hulls and protect her island home. On the mainland, Kwame-Eke is the premier siege engineer, building towering assault barges destined to bring the islanders to their knees. But when Folasade boards his flagship to sink it and Kwame refuses to abandon his masterpiece, a sudden storm wrecks the barge and drags them both into a perilous, forgotten submerged labyrinth. Armed with only a handful of crystal-forming sponges and Kwame's mechanical wits, the fierce diver and the charming engineer must fight their way through ancient perils. In the depths, surviving means trusting the enemy—and surrendering to a passion deeper than the sea.

When a seasonal avalanche traps them in the high sanctuary of Vzork Mountains, an operative who breaks into vaults to return stolen artifacts finds herself snowed in with the ruthless commander tasked with stopping her. The throne's line of succession was broken before the snow fell. Now, the sanctuary's isolated halls hide the only legitimate proof of inheritance. She intends to extract it for the rightful claimant; he is sworn to secure it for his faction. With the storm screaming outside, neither can escape. As supplies dwindle and the sanctuary's hidden traps demand unwilling cooperation, the two enemies must decide what is more dangerous: the lethal descent awaiting them in spring, or the escalating heat between them in the dark.

Doreagh Mhoran was the best duelist the Circle of Vows ever crowned — until the day her own marriage-bond went wrong, and she should have died breaking it. She didn't. Twelve years and a stolen name later, she trains other people's champions instead of becoming one, hiding a ruined sword hand and a truth that would end her the moment anyone looked closely enough.

Then Sorlagh Bhannoch walks into her practice yard: faster, hungrier, and utterly unafraid of the blade — with ten days to win a fighting license before her family bonds her to a stranger to settle an old debt. Coaching her is the only way to keep them both safe. It's also the fastest way to be seen.

Because this year, for the first time in a decade, the Crown is watching the Circle's trials in person — and its new Warrant has a very specific rumor to chase: someone broke a completed marriage-bond and lived. He doesn't know her name yet. He's about to learn everything else.

In a court where marriages are treaties and magic enforces every vow, one duel can end a war, seal a fate, or unravel a secret twelve years buried. Doreagh has one apprentice, one ruined hand, and about eight days left to decide whether hiding was ever really keeping her safe at all.

A thief who only steals to return what was lost is snowed in at a mountain sanctuary with her sworn enemy, a ruthless enforcer. They are bound together by an inheritance nobody wants, a deadly legacy that can only be unlocked if they endure the winter and each other. As the snow deepens, the line between hatred and dangerous attraction thins, but the past is hunting them both.

She knows every back road in the kingdom, but the one path she cannot map is the one out of the trials. Conscripted as an apprentice to a mentor whose methods are lethal and whose motives are entirely hidden, a long-haul courier with a failing heart must survive a brutal testing ground. Here, the kingdom's heirs do not rule—they compete, they bleed, and they die alongside commoners in service to the Engine, a terrifying machine that consumes more than just fuel to keep their borders safe. When a deadly rival heir becomes an agonizingly necessary partner, she realizes survival means feeding the very system that is killing her, or tearing it apart from the inside.