Bride of the Ashen Throne

Neris of Callow was betrothed at three years old to a man she was taught to despise. On her wedding day she walks to him through a capital still smoking from his own pyres, past gallows, past children with burn-scarred arms. He doesn't want a wife. He wants a treaty. He locks her in the east wing and lets her be forgotten. But forgotten brides have time to think. Neris walks the burned districts, opens a hospital, and starts putting out the fires his ministers set. When they come to burn her too, the Ashen King rides out with a torch in his own hand, and lights the funeral pires of the men who trained him. She never stops hating him. She just discovers there is room in the same heart for both. Some brides bring dowries. This one brings a new law.