“The relentless clock of fate was groaning over to the next hour, ringing the arrival of a battle as old as time, sounding the final alarm, the final chance to fall to our blades or lift them high. It was repeating infernal hours that grew hungrier with each turn, more vicious than the day, the year, the century before.”

The end was here.

The great war had begun.

I had been torn apart and remade, a marionette to dance over the coals of this world, stitched together by my tormentors. The great masters thought they could break me down and own me. They were wrong. I had won my freedom, my place in this world, my golden-eyed protector by my side. Until it happened again; the grim call of fate looking out at me through eyes of darkness, the great masters waiting with the power I needed, curses and promises in their hands. It was time to make another deal. It was time to play their game in earnest.

This epic, apocalyptic fantasy is dark, lush and gritty. The heroin has multiple, slow-burn love interests, who all begin as true enemies, so you don't have to choose your favourite anti-hero. This series has some intense and dark themes, and the heroes begin as utterly irredeemable, alpha a-holes, so consider yourselves warned!