“…he stripped off his black gloves, and for the first time, Kael caught a glimpse of the skin beneath. It was even paler than the man’s face, as sunlight rarely touched it. The tattoo Kael had glimpsed peeking from beneath his high collar wound across the backs of his hands as well, black ink etched over the ridges of old scars like some grim attempt at camouflage.”
First Engineer Kael has spent his entire life hiding a secret that would see him executed for high treason. In the Empire, where all arcane power is outlawed, he keeps his head down—teaching at the Imperial University, avoiding others, and living a life that is safe, if painfully lonely.
Until the day Zakh, the crown prince and lord commander of the Imperial Enforcers, walks into the School of Engineering. Zakh needs a first engineer to investigate an impossible failure: a
mechanical heart, thought to be flawless, has malfunctioned, killing its host. And now Kael is tasked with finding out why.
The pull between the two men is immediate, inconvenient, and entirely unwise, because Zakh is the one man in the Empire with the authority to execute Kael without even a trial. As the truth
behind the failure unravels, Kael finds himself at a crossroad: continue living a lie to survive, or risk everything—his people, his life, his heart—by trusting the man sworn to protect the Empire at any cost with the one secret that could destroy them both.
Theme:
MM dark fantasy romance, fantasy, steampunk, star-crossed lovers, murder mystery, imperial intrigue, lust at first sight, age-gap
Trigger warning:
Graphic violence, gore, torture, false accusations, threat of execution, psychological manipulation, references to genocide, explicit sexual content, polyamory (only referenced), systemic inequality, psychopathic behavior, and animal harm.
Leave a Reply