Crown of Thorns and Embers

The needle slid through the soldier's flesh, and Elara did not flinch. She had learned long ago that hesitation cost lives. What she had not learned was how to stop caring - and that, more than anything, was what would get her killed. Elara is a healer in the Low Quarter, the kind who doesn't ask for names. For three years she has quietly served the Thorn, a rebel network working to unseat the man who sits on the Obsidian Throne - the man she once loved, before he chose power over everything they were to each other.
King Aldric needs her. Not because he knows she is the rebel contact his Hounds have been hunting. Because the crown is killing him, and she is the only healer in the kingdom who might know how to stop it. She should let it. She knows she should let it. But Elara has spent ten years believing Aldric became a monster. Walking the halls of his castle, watching him burn his own cruelest orders, reading the exhaustion behind his eyes, she begins to wonder if the truth is more complicated than betrayal.
A slow-burn dark fantasy romance with enemies-to-lovers tension, second chances, a morally grey king, and a healer who came to save a kingdom and stayed to save the man. Perfect for fans of political intrigue, childhood sweethearts reunited, and love stories forged in fire and ash.