The Shattered Crown

In a world where magic is outlawed, a shy 20-year-old tavern maid enlists in the military to learn runes and swordsmanship to protect the people she cares for. 

A Touch of Frost is a coming-of-age epic fantasy novel about an unlikely heroine who wanted a normal life. But fate has different plans, and the people she’s trying to protect might be the greatest threat.

Tragedies and curses, like all bad things, came in threes.

Most runes are forbidden within Aitera. Those who create them are executed, or bound for fear they’d be the one prophesized to destroy the crown. Cybele cherished and adored the magic within her father’s stories of love and adventure until a curse stilled his beating heart, provoking fear within hers.

At nearly 20, in the goddess’s eyes, Cybele’s responsibility is to marry and have children, so when her estranged mother pens a letter requesting to rebuild their relationship while proposing to arrange a marriage for her, Cybele gratefully accepts. She believes this will give her the simple life she longs for.

But when tragedy strikes, Cybele resents her weakness and foolishness, realizing that life isn’t simple, and the world isn’t clearly divided between good and evil. As war looms overhead and Cybele’s forced from her home, a handsome stranger helps and offers her the key to harnessing a strength she didn’t know she had.

Cybele soon discovers the man who saved her holds many secrets, and the magic that’s taken everything from her could be her only chance of survival.

This is an epic fantasy with a slow burn romance subplot. There are aspects of tragedy, grief, abandonment, violence, and war.