The Obsidian Court's Captive

A blood-ruby pulses in the iron vise while Rosalind Carroway tests the setting one last time with her chisel. Outside her forge the sky holds the bruised purple of the Obsidian Court's perpetual twilight, and the first blood-magic lanterns are sputtering to life along the black glass avenues. The woman collecting the amulet is Lady Elara Vex, hollow-cheeked, with the blue tracery at her wrists of someone tapped too often by her husband's household. Rosalind bled into the forge for three days to bind the salts to Elara's own blood. Seal it in the clasp, she says, and nobody in that court sees you unless you want them to. It pays for two months of Lenore's indenture payments. Rosalind would like that to be the real reason she took the job. Then boots on the cobbles, a noble voice telling someone to check the tannery, and the door opens on a tall vampire with a white scar from temple to jaw and a cauterized wound spreading dark across his sleeve. *"I need a blade that will kill the High King."* The High King is Malachai Vane. The man asking is Cassian Blackthorn, who already knows exactly who Rosalind is, and whose sister she has been paying for. Lenore's indenture is held by the High King's own steward. Rosalind has been paying against it for three years and the principal has never moved. Cassian offers a writ of transfer that would move the contract to him and let Lenore walk free. Rosalind demands the document first. Not his word, not his plan. The sealed paper, in her hand. She will forge the blade. She will get her sister's contract. And the moment Lenore is safe, she intends to burn the weapon to scrap and watch Cassian Blackthorn choke on his ambition. That is the plan. It does not survive a court that keeps a blood-iron collar waiting, a house that already caught Cassian once, or a gift that takes something out of the smith every time she uses it. A dark court fantasy romance of blood-smithing, indenture contracts and vampire politics, about a human who forges a regicide to buy one person's freedom. The romance is closed-door.