The Iron Chest: A Single Brightness (Amereld #1, Volume 1)

Jabrael enters a refuge hidden inside a forested mountain wounded, bound, and already surrounded by legend. Some call her a hero. Others believe she is a murderer corrupted by the darkness she brought home. Before the mountain’s leaders decide whether she is an ally or a danger, she must tell them how she became the woman standing before them.

Her story begins when she was fourteen.

Crown Princess of New Andradae, Jabrael has been raised beneath four suns to embody the hope and perfection expected of the Sila heir. Half-human among a people displaced from another world, she knows that every word, gesture, and emotion will be judged. Only her closest friend, Lady Elyria, gives her the freedom to be something other than a princess.

But even El does not know that Jabrael is a Channeller, able to sense divine energy, or that an unknown God has forbidden her to reveal it.

When an enemy from the Sila’s darkest history brings war inside New Andradae’s supposedly impenetrable defences, Jabrael and El are forced to face a kind of suffering their protected lives have never prepared them to understand.

As questions of faith, forbidden magic, and political power close around them, Jabrael must learn how to protect her people without losing the person who knows her best. For long before she broke their laws, she was a princess trying to understand which laws deserved to be obeyed.