Iron and Incense: A Gilded Empire Betrayed; A Marriage Forged in Secrets

By Byron Jackson

Vespera once believed her gilded cage was a throne. As the Star-Sighted prophetess of the Aethelgard Empire, she traded her freedom in a marriage of political poison, wedding Kaelen-the brutal, silent Prince of the Iron Marches-to prevent the apocalypse she saw in his cold eyes. But her vision was a lie. The true monster wears a crown of sunlit gold, not scarred iron.

Now, branded as the "Hated Bride" and exiled to the frozen wastes of Kaelen's homeland, Vespera walks a razor's edge. Her magic, fueled by the Star-Current, flickers and fails in the shadow of his void-iron presence. Every prophetic glimpse steals a strand of her silvering hair, and her new, unstable power to see memories in objects threatens to drown her in other people's pain. To survive the Marcher court's disdain and her own husband's guarded silence, she must learn the language of scars and silence-a language Kaelen has mastered through a lifetime of agony.

Kaelen's War-Forged Blood is both his people's salvation and his personal torture. Each hardening of his blood is a lightning bolt of chronic pain, a price he pays to protect the marginalized survivors who look to him as a shield against the Empire's encroaching shadow. He never asked for a prophetess as a bride, especially one whose very touch unravels the careful void he maintains around his heart. But when a fresh vision reveals a plot that would see his entire people sacrificed as a "divine offering," their fragile, grudging alliance becomes the last line of defense.

In a land where oaths are sealed in blood and cannot be broken, Vespera and Kaelen must forge a real trust from the ruins of their forced marriage. To outmaneuver the Sun-King's zealous assassins and a traitor within the Marches, she will have to blind herself to the future, and he will have to bleed for a past he cannot forget. The cost of saving their world may be the shattering of their own.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GMCZF6NN
• ISBN13: 9798247430667
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"