The Bodies We Owe

By Iona Bellgrave

Her sister came back to work three days after they buried her. She was early.

In the Republic of Sere, death does not cancel a debt. A bronze nail sends a corpse back to the loom, the mine, or the front-obedient, tireless, and still owing.

Claudia Ardan is a factory mechanic with an unreliable heart. When her dead sister walks into Loom Seventeen wearing the dress they buried her in, Claudia discovers the flaw inside the Republic's miracle. For seventeen seconds, her missing heartbeat can stop the dead from obeying. For the same seventeen seconds, Claudia's own heart stops.

Captain Aurel Venn carries three hundred dead soldiers in the bronze seal beneath his throat. The Republic sends him to contain Claudia. He should see a fugitive; she should see only the officer whose voice moves corpses. But every confrontation pulls them closer to the place where power becomes intimate: her hand over his seal, his mouth on hers, an army waiting for a voice.

Then seventeen seconds of disobedience become an uprising.

Across corpse markets, drowned marshes, occupied provinces, and open battle, Claudia's flaw becomes the weapon every faction wants to own. Aurel carries an army in his throat; Claudia carries a revolution in a heart that may not survive it. Their enemies want obedience. Their allies want victory. Both are willing to spend bodies.

They want each other in the one place the Republic has made impossible: outside command. But wanting does not clear the ledger-every order he gave, every corpse that answered, every life the uprising may devour. Desire cannot absolve him. Love cannot make the violence clean. Freedom cannot mean building another master.

An epic adult dark fantasy of industrial necromancy, rebellion, war, sacrifice, and erotic tension sharpened into a morally dangerous slow-burn love story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HDQZNPBJ
• ISBN13: 9798191988818
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"