• Iron Pulse •

Author: XIA

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚟𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚜 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚞𝚖𝚊𝚗. 𝚂𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Princess Arienne Aravelle has spent her life performing the version of herself Sylvaris needs: composed, capable, untouchable. She is very good at it. She has had to be. But the city is changing. The creatures Sylvaris was built alongside are retreating into silence. Cryptic letters are finding their way into Arienne's hands. Something is moving beneath the surface of everything she has spent years protecting, and every warning points to a danger no one wants to name. She does not have time for the new frontier sentinel reassigned to her guard. Ikor Vardon is from the Outer Ring, unbothered by palace protocol, and constitutionally incapable of pretending not to notice things. He notices everything. Especially her. The problem is not that he is a distraction. The problem is that he is the only person in the palace who looks at her and seems to see something she forgot was there. Arienne has spent a long time being careful. Ikor is making it very difficult to remember why.