She was supposed to be routine.
In ten years, Inquisitor Caspian Voss has never lost a case, never questioned an order, and never looked twice at a condemned woman. Seraphine Caldwell changes all three before the first night is out.
She's been tried, documented, and signed over to the pyre. What she hasn't been is explained - not why the Bishop himself requested her transfer, not why two Inquisitors went missing in the weeks before Caspian was assigned, not why her file contains a name that shouldn't be there: Voss. Written in a dead woman's hand. Three generations old.
Seraphine knows what that name means. She knows what Caspian is - what his bloodline carries without knowing it, what his family has been dying for without understanding why. Her grandmother spent a lifetime preparing her for this moment and left her with one instruction she cannot afford to follow:
Don't let them kill him.
The deeper they travel from the city, the darker the road becomes. Men who should be allies turn up dead. The Bishop's reach is longer than either of them knew. And whatever is written in the Voss blood - whatever truth three generations of the Church have been burning witches to keep buried - it's waking up.
She came into his custody a condemned woman. He has no name yet for what she is becoming.
Some truths don't stay buried. Some bindings don't break.
A gothic dark romance with an enemies-to-lovers slow burn, a dangerously protective hero, and a conspiracy threaded through generations of blood and ash. Intended for readers 18+. Standalone with series potential.