A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane

This book was super addicting and I now have a new must read author for my shelves.

I had to go back and read book one in this series arc. Though you can read this without the first novel, as it is a standalone in a series. I just decided not to. This is a true love story even with the fantasy setting, so if you haven't a fantasy reader this might still do it for you because the love story is the main plot. I adored these two. Lizzan and Aerax were IT. Dragons and Romance? Sign me up. This wasn't a forbidden romance essay but the strife these two face in loving each other. It is next level. You spend the entire novel shipping them fiercely. They were everything. In a book filled with fantastic world building and extensively developed characters, this boils down to a beautiful love story.

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Blurb:

Milla Vane returns to a world of kings, magic, and passion in her exhilarating A Gathering of Dragons series, as a great alliance forms to stand against an evil warlord intent on their destruction. Danger lurks in the western realms. The Destroyer’s imminent return has sent the realms into turmoil as desperate citizens seek refuge—but there’s no safety to be found when demons and wraiths crawl out from the shadows. Even Koth, a northern island kingdom left untouched by the Destroyer a generation past, is besieged by terrors spawned from corrupt magics. When Lizzan leads the Kothan army against these terrors, only to see her soldiers massacred and to emerge as the only survivor, she is called a coward and a deserter. Shunned from her home, Lizzan now wanders in solitude as a mercenary for hire, until she encounters a group of warriors seeking new alliances with the northern kingdoms—a group that includes Aerax, the bastard prince of Koth, and the man who sent her into exile. Though they were childhood friends, Aerax cannot allow himself to be close to the only woman who might thwart his treacherous plan to save their island realm. But when a goddess's demand binds them together, Lizzan and Aerax must find a way to overcome their painful pasts. Or there will be no future for the western realms...