Crown of Shadow and Bone : A Morally Grey Gothic Romantasy of Dark Sorcery and Forbidden Vows

They promised the shadows would devour her soul, but nobody warned her that the dark would feel like home.Lady Vivienne Thorne is the last living blood-scion of an extinct dynasty, cursed with the waking vein-an ancient osteomantic magic capable of commanding dead bone and breathing life into forgotten relics. When her younger sister falls victim to the consumptive Pale Wasting, the holy inquisitors of the Sunlit Primacy offer an ultimatum: surrender to their pyres, or let her sister rot in a gilded cell.Desperate to secure the lunar medicine that will keep her sister alive, Vivienne surrenders herself as the Blood Tithe to the Obsidian Citadel of Morvath, crossing the frozen Boundary of Weeping Willows to wed Lord Malakor Ravencroft.Feared across the realm as the Uncrowned Ghoul, Malakor is a brooding, morally grey sorcerer-warlord bound to the cursed Skeletal Diadem. His touch turns flowers to ash, his halls are guarded by sentient ravens, and his court is a viper's nest of treacherous northern lords who smell blood in the water. Yet within the fortress of night, Vivienne finds neither a mindless butcher nor an unyielding monster. She finds a lethal, battle-scarred sovereign fighting an existential war against an empire of pious hypocrites.When Grand Justiciar Castor Brand launches a holy crusade of total cleansing with war-carriages of liquid solar fire, Vivienne and Malakor discover that their powers are two halves of the same circle. Together, they must awaken the unified Crown of Shadow and Bone-or watch their realm burn to cinders.