Dragonsworn

He was born with a dragon's blood in him. He has spent his whole life afraid of it.

Soldiers in unmarked armour ambush an iron caravan on the Saltmarch Road, and a mage named Daniel Dunnellan burns half a hillside to stop them. A dying sergeant leaves him three words: the Ember wakes.

With a priestess of the Silver Lady at his side, Daniel follows the trail south into Oskara: through a slave forge, a wizards' prison with no doors, and the Blackmaw, the lightless road under the mountains. At the end of it waits the Emberheart, a crown cut from the living heart of a dragon, which chains any creature of that blood.

It can chain the Cinderqueen, oldest wyrm on the Coast.
It can chain her seven children.
And it can chain Daniel.

An army is already marching north. To stop it, Daniel must go into the mountain where the queen sleeps, find her brood in the dark beneath her, and ask them for something no red dragon has given freely in three thousand years.

Not every chain is forged. Some are given.

Dragonsworn is Book One of the Ashen Accord: an epic fantasy of dragons, dark roads and hard-won loyalty, with a slow-burn romance at its heart.