The gods are dying. Someone is killing them.

Zara Ashborne has spent twenty-two years as the Temple's most lethal weapon ? a shadow assassin who moves through darkness and answers to no one. When Vessels from three rival bloodlines are found dead in the eastern provinces, she's assigned to investigate. The assignment comes with a condition she didn't ask for: a Legion escort she doesn't want.

Commander Caelen Soldaryn has built his life on one truth ? the empire is worth serving. But the deeper they ride east, the less that truth holds. The dead Vessels, the absent intelligence, the cult that operates less like fanatics and more like a program ? all of it points toward the institution he has given twenty-three years of unconditional loyalty.

Then the bond activates.

A god-bond: the rarest event in five centuries, impossible across bloodlines, suppressed by the Temple because it makes Vessels ungovernable. The mark appears on both of them simultaneously ? and what they discover in the cult's underground archives changes everything they understand about why the gods are going silent.

The gods aren't fading. They're being hunted. And two dying gods chose their best Vessels for each other, encoding a final act into both of them before they could be stopped.

Now the Temple wants them dead. The High Consul has deployed his own hunters. And the only thing that can stop the systematic murder of the divine is the irreversible choice two people haven't made yet.

BOUND IN ASH is the first book in The Shattered Covenant series ? a dark, action-driven romantasy featuring fated mates, forbidden bonds, a crumbling empire, and a love story built on honesty and full information.