A Hymn for Rust and Ruin

Lenya Rostova lives a quiet life charting the shifting, rust-plagued Wastes, her only companion a clever, bio-luminescent ferret named Flicker. Her world shatters when she's abducted by Damyan Volkov, the unyielding Warden of the Citadel of Kvasz, a monolithic city-state powered by ancient terraforming technology. Damyan believes Lenya is the legendary saboteur 'Kestrel,' the woman responsible for the catastrophic system failure that killed his family and plunged the Citadel into decay. As punishment, he forces her into a 'Binding Vow,' a sacred marriage that traps her within the Citadel's walls, her life forfeit to his whims. Lenya, kind-hearted to a fault, tries to survive his cold fury and navigate the Citadel's rigid, unspoken laws. But the more Damyan tries to break her, the more he finds himself drawn to her resilience, while Lenya sees glimpses of the man behind the monster. Her near-death in the decaying lower levels finally forces Damyan to question everything, revealing a truth far more devastating than his imagined betrayal. Can Lenya survive long enough to expose the real culprit, and can Damyan atone for ruining the one person who could save his world?