A Knife for the Bellwright

She came to Varnholt to kill him. The winter came for them both. Kessa Volane is the best quieter the Guild of Quiet Hands has ever trained. She can wrap silence around herself so completely that locks turn without a click and screams die in the throat. Her next contract will buy her freedom: kill Lorcan Ashby, the last Bellwright of a mountain city, the only man whose bells keep the Hollow Winter from swallowing the pass. She arrives as a harmless clerk. Then the snow closes the road, and she is trapped inside the bell tower with her target. Lorcan is not what she was promised. He is patient with his apprentice, wry with the town, and so cold from years of ringing that no one has touched his bare hands in a decade. Warmth can only pass to a Bellwright when it is given freely, and Kessa has never given anything away in her life. When someone else starts cutting the ropes of the failing wall-bells, and the frozen dead begin to stand in the streets, Kessa must decide who she really works for. The contract. The Guild that raised her. Or the man she was sent to silence. A Knife for the Bellwright is a standalone romantasy of assassins and bells, snowbound forced proximity, a touch-starved hero, and a slow-burn love that has to be chosen before it can save anyone. Perfect for readers who love enemies to lovers, cold magic with a real cost, found family, and a warm, earned happily ever after.