"Like watching a pyromancer class unlock in real time." - Corin Vale, award-winning author of the Tidemarked Cycle
An epic, multi-POV fantasy perfect for fans of The Priory of the Orange Tree and Foundryside, where a lantern thief sworn to carry a sacred spark discovers her vow is the hinge on which continents turn. In a world of brass engines and stormglass towers, one ember could reignite gods—and grievances—best left cold.
Kaia Rell wants only one thing: to keep the oath she stole. Once a temple pickpocket in the copper markets of Asterion, she has bound herself to the Ember of Velis, a living coal that must be ferried across the Sunscarred Expanse to relight the Beacon at Orac's Spine. If she succeeds, her brother's sentence in the Salt Courts will be commuted. If she fails, the ember dies—and with it, the last leverage she has over a city that would rather forget she exists. But the Gloam Marshal of the Night Crown, a sworn agent of shadow and rumor, will do anything to stop her, no matter how the ember's light reveals a name he has tried to bury . . .
As their paths collide, they're drawn into a perilous game of charters and knives with Count Vaelor Indreth, who begrudgingly serves Lark VII, the child-queen of Halcyon Reach; Sevra the Maskmonger, who bottles phoenix-ash into lullabies the rich can dream; and Jex Thalen, a long-lost ship-brother whose salt-bright grin hides a map etched into his bones. From the drowned galleries of Aramoor to the brass labyrinth beneath Karth Alk, alliances flare and gutter, and the price of warmth is tallied in blood.
For long ago, the Flamebearers seared the earth with sun-script, fusing island to island with living leybrands to keep the seas from swallowing humankind. But in an age that has forgotten the cost of that covenant, Fire may not be the only power nursing a grudge. Tide, Stone, and Storm strain against their bindings, and the Ember's song is changing.
Daring, lush, and tragically romantic, Flamebearer's Oath blazes open a duology about vows, found family, and the dangerous mercy of light.
