A Mercy of Knives: 1

Mercy is a wound that does not heal.Three hundred years ago, a human king spared a dying serpent-demon on the battlefield. It should have been an act of grace. Instead, the dark powers blessed the marriage that followed - and turned a single mercy into a living door between two worlds.Princess Nuha bint al-Mundhir was born on the wrong side of that bargain. She can read what any person truly wants with a single glance. She is gentle. She is human. And sealed inside her body is an ancient, patient cold that the god beyond the door has been waiting three hundred years to claim.Toren Vask was emptied of his name and forged into a weapon by the empire that destroyed everything he was. He was sent across the sea to kill her. He was not prepared to look into her eyes and recognize the same hollow the cold had carved in him.As the walls between worlds begin to thin and an ancient enemy moves through the white port-city of Marwah wearing stolen faces, an assassin who has forgotten how to want anything must choose: finish the task that remade him - or protect the one person alive who sees exactly what he is, and does not look away.The door is opening. And mercy, it turns out, was always the key.A dark, atmospheric fantasy of cursed bloodlines, forbidden bonds, and the terrible price of kindness - Book One of The Age of Demons.The dead are only the beginning of the debt.