The Heartstone and the Aquarius

On the morning of her arranged marriage, she takes one last ride at sunrise — and meets the man who came to steal her. Daniela of Montechenu was born under the sign of the Water Bearer, and the Aquarius gift runs deep in her: she sees what others cannot. For seventeen years her father has hidden it. For seventeen years the whispers have traveled anyway... the girl who sees too much. Now the Nordean conqueror Lord Alfred has come to collect her. An erased prophecy names Daniela the only one who can find the Heartstone, a talisman powerful enough to bend fate itself, and Alfred intends to close his hand around it. She surrenders to spare her family, and is taken east into the keeping of Commander Aiden Rohar: scarred, haunted, and forged from a people Alfred already crushed. Aiden is her captor. He is also the only one who doesn't flinch from what she is. Across sea and stone into the harsh North, wary respect becomes something far more dangerous, a longing neither of them will name and neither can afford. But the prophecy was buried for a reason, and every fragment Daniela uncovers reveals a darkness older and hungrier than any conqueror, one willing to kill for the Heartstone. Hunted by the jilted warlord she was promised to, bound to the man who took her, Daniela must sift truth from treachery to break a curse 162 years in the making. If she does not reach the altar on Crow's Heart Mountain before the darkness claims the Heartstone, there will be nothing left to save. Book One of the Heartstones of the Zodiac series is a slow-burn enchanted, romantic fantasy of forced proximity, ancient magic, and a woman who discovers she was never meant to remain hidden.