Lady of Steel and Straw

A tenacious heroine with a dark gift must defend her family's legacy and faith from a handsome enemy, in this young adult fantasy debut.

Lady Charlotte Sand was born to calm the restless dead, but her power has grown unpopular thanks to the newly ascendant religion of the Silent Gods. Worse, her family’s ancestral Guardian, a lavender scarecrow who was once a defender of the crown, hasn’t woken for a new heir since her father’s sordid death. With other Guardians also reduced to pitiful bags of herbs on distant farms, the Order of the Guardians is a struggling remnant filled with political exiles. But darkness stirs in Niveaux, and the spirits of the dead are turning into vengeful wraiths with alarming frequency.

Captain Luc de Montaigne is a pious follower of the Silent Gods, and he comes calling on Sand Manor with orders to collect the magic hearts of every sleeping Guardian. His success would purge the kingdom of the Old God once and for all, but Charlotte proves defiant and triggers a faction war. As an army of the dead amasses and dormant warriors stir from slumber, Luc and Charlotte grapple with a forbidden attraction: kill the other and step closer to victory—or yield to the electricity between them. The hearts they stand to lose may, in fact, be their own.