Ironvein: A Hollow Court Novel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798251347661)

Her blood is silver. His eyes are shattered. And the thing between them could save both worlds - or burn them to nothing.

Sera Voss has spent her entire life hiding.

Hiding her blood - which runs silver instead of red. Hiding her identity - as the last ironvein, a mortal born with liquid metal in her veins. Hiding her heart - because every strong emotion accelerates the iron toward her organs, bringing her closer to the Stillness, the slow, frozen death that took her father when she was nine.

She has built a life of survival. No joy. No grief. No love. Just the flat, gray, emotionless middle ground where heartbeats stay slow and iron stays still. She works in a forge. She makes door hinges. She waits to die.

Then a fae lord walks through her door and sets her blood on fire.

Kael Vorn is the Lord of the Hollow Court - an underground kingdom of Unseelie fae carved into the roots of mountains. He is ancient, cold, and broken in ways he has spent nine centuries hiding. His eyes - shattered from birth, a mosaic of fractured silver - mark him as damaged. His former bond-brother wants his throne. His kingdom is crumbling. And the Veil - the barrier between mortal and fae worlds - is failing.

He needs Sera. Her iron blood is the key to forging weapons that could save both realms. Her body is the bridge between mortal metal and fae magic. She is the last of her kind - and the only person alive who can enter the sealed Forge of the First Vein, where the original weapons were made a thousand years ago.

But Sera has conditions.

Don't touch her without permission.
When the work is done, she goes home.
And the hammer stays with her. Always.

Kael agrees. Because he needs her blood.

He doesn't expect to need her.

In the Hollow Court, Sera discovers a world of impossible beauty and lethal politics. Stone trees that reach for a violet sky. Bridges of woven iron spanning crystal towers. A fire that burns every color. And a Forge that recognizes her blood and sings when she strikes.

She also discovers enemies.

Theron Ashvale - Kael's former bond-brother, golden-eyed and copper-haired, whose warm smile hides a cold ambition. He wants the throne. He wants the weapons. And he wants Sera - not as an ally but as a tool.

The Ember Court - the fire-blooded Seelie kingdom beyond the Thornwall, massing for an invasion that the failing Veil will make possible.

The Hollow Court itself - where half the nobles want to use her and the other half want her dead, and the only person standing between her and annihilation is a lord with broken eyes who is learning, for the first time in centuries, what it means to feel.

Because Kael is feeling.

Against every instinct. Against nine hundred years of practiced emptiness. Against the hard-earned knowledge that the last person he trusted shattered him so completely the fractures show in his irises.

He is feeling.

And Sera - the girl who doesn't feel, the woman who caged her heart to survive - is feeling too.

The pull between them is not just chemistry. It's alchemy. Mortal iron and fae magic, resonating at frequencies that haven't been heard in a thousand years. A chord that the court can hear. A chord that the ancient laws will claim. A chord that could bind them together - or trap them both.

If you've ever built a cage around your own heart to survive - this book will show you what happens when you let the door open.