Smokeless Fire

Sabra Kadir copies covenants for a living, which in Sarab means she is the one person who knows how badly the city’s paperwork has been done. So when the wells run bitter and the Kindler tells the city that the old devil bound beneath the Ninth Ward must be unmade, and that it takes a scribe who can read the seal to do it, there is exactly one scribe left who can. The Kindler made sure of that.

She goes down into the burned ward expecting to die. What she finds is a signature, and a fire-lord who tells her before anything else that the door behind her was never locked.

His name is Zahir, and the city has blamed him for a thousand years for a burning he did not set. He gives her the law the temple cut out of every copy but hers: the fire grants only what is freely asked, and a wish taken by force does not bless the taker but rots the granter into the ash-mad. Forty years of miracles in Sarab. Forty years of droughts and fevers arriving right behind them, like a bill.

Sabra has the true founding compact, she has the well-records, and she has a devil who asks before he touches her. On the Feast of Lamps, in front of every soul who has called the Kindler merciful, she means to read.

Smokeless Fire is a standalone dark fantasy romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. For adult readers.