Bride of the Atomic God

Bride of the Atomic God by Claudetta AureliaThe world ended in fire generations ago. Mireille's town survives on its edges anyway - net menders in doorless doorways, children playing in seaweed veils, bread rising in ovens that refuse to stop working. Mireille refuses to shrink to fit the ruin around her. It's the kind of refusal that, in a town like this, makes people nervous. Then the cult comes out of the ash flats.
They mark her door. They tell her the Atomic God - a colossus built from ship hulls and bomber wings, a molten Core pulsing in its chest - has chosen her as His Bride. They kill her oldest friend when he tries to stop them. And Mireille walks into the temple anyway, not as an offering, but to see for herself exactly what waits beneath the wasteland. What she finds is not a hungry god demanding sacrifice.
It's a being who has been worshipped, feared, and obeyed for a thousand years - and never once met as an equal. He doesn't want a bride. He wants someone who will argue with him, challenge him, and choose him freely. When Mireille touches the Core, she doesn't burn. She transforms - and what she builds afterward, with the God beside her as partner rather than master, will remake everything the cult believed about fire, worship, and power.
A steamy, atmospheric post-apocalyptic romantasy about grief, defiance, and choosing creation over destruction. For readers who want their love interest to be an actual god - and their heroine to never, ever kneel.