The curtains are the colour of expensive things. The bed has four posts. The shelf is full of books she'll never read.

Olwyn knows a gilded cage when she's inside one.

She survived the courts of Noctura. She helped broker peace between two worlds, chose the men who chose her back, and thought the hardest part was behind her. Then the vampire king of the East decided he wanted her for himself.

Casius Sovran is not what she expected—not cruel enough, not cold enough, and entirely too unbothered by every attempt she makes to hate him. His palace has no right to be this beautiful, his half-sister has no right to be this disarming, and Olwyn has no right to be laughing in a sea cove two weeks into her captivity. She is still a prisoner. The problem is she keeps forgetting.

But Atha is moving. The peace Olwyn wants is fracturing, and her mother is pulling strings that reach further than anyone knew; into Noctura, into Vesperis, into the men Olwyn trusts most. And Casius, it turns out, was never as simple as a villain.

She just isn't sure she can save him before it's too late.

A Blaze in the Darkness is the second book in the Light and Shadows series: dark romantasy about divided loyalties, power hard-won, and the inconvenient truth that the people who see you clearest are often the ones you never expected.