Of Frost and Candlelight
When Aurelisse Valehart opens her eyes in the dead of winter, she finds herself in a world that should not exist and inside the body of a young noblewoman bound for Frostmere, the northern duchy guarding the Empire’s frozen border.
With memories from another life and fragments of Aurelisse’s own still lingering beneath her skin, she arrives at a fortress carved from ice, war, and silence.
The north is on the edge of collapse.
Beyond the walls, monsters that once attacked mindlessly have begun to change.
They observe.
They retreat.
They learn.
And the fragile balance that has protected the Empire for generations is beginning to crack.
Forced into two years of military service as a daughter of House Valehart, Aurelisse is assigned to the duchy’s war records office, where maps, casualty reports, and whispered politics reveal a far more dangerous battlefield than she expected.
Armed with knowledge from a previous life in psychology, history, philosophy, and behavior studies, and with a rare gift that allows her to sense emotions hidden beneath words, Aurelisse begins to notice things others miss.
Fear hidden beneath discipline.
Grief buried inside duty.
Secrets woven through noble smiles.
Even the emotions of creatures beyond the border.
Including those of the man who commands the north.
Lucien Ashbourne, Duke of Frostmere, is known throughout the Empire as the Wolf of the North, a cold and brilliant commander, one of only three swordmasters in the realm, feared by enemies and allies alike.
To Aurelisse, he is also exhausted.
Lonely.
And carrying wounds no battlefield ever gave him.
What begins as duty slowly becomes something far more dangerous:
shared strategy,
quiet understanding,
stolen warmth in the middle of winter and a bond neither of them intended to form.
But with nobles gathering at Frostmere, the Imperial family watching from the capital, old bloodline secrets beginning to surface, and war shifting into something no one understands…
that the north is changing, and so is Aurelisse.