Ashes of the Winter Bride

They burned the winter bride on the third night. She walked out of it on the fourth. Ilka came back to the frozen capital to find the king who lit her pyre, and instead she found a man drinking himself to death because he thought he killed the woman he loved. Both of them were used. Both of them believed they were the only one who could have stopped it. In a palace where every corridor has a spy and every fire is watched, Ilka and Emeric forge an alliance in secret: she will help him find the true hand behind the pyre, and he will help her break the curse she was born under and doesn't understand. What they don't plan for is the walled garden, the scarred hands, and the moment neither of them reaches for a knife. This is a dark enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance about a bride who came back and a king who was always the sacrifice.