The Man I Was Never Meant To Love

She was promised to an Ardent son. She just never knew it was the wrong one.

Saskia Voss mends burnt paper for a living, and the one book she cannot finish is her dead brother’s ledger. Then Sorin Ardent comes back up the river road. He was cast out years ago for the fire that killed her brother, and he watches her like a man who has never once let go of anything he wanted.

She is engaged to his gentle younger brother. She wears a silver band that was never meant for her. And every week a new key on a blue ribbon arrives at her door, each one opening a room that holds another piece of the truth.

Sorin does not hide what he is. He watches. He keeps. He decides. But the more pages she restores, the more she sees the man she was told to hate has been paying for someone else’s crime.

The man who lit the match is smiling at her across the table. The man who gave the order is dying in the house on the hill. And the only one who will stand in the fire for her is the one she was never meant to love.