When Embers Remember: She Rose to Reclaim What Fire Stole
"They took everything from you—your family, your memories, even your name. Now take it all back."
Nineteen-year-old Elara Crane wakes in a stranger's bed with no memory of how she got there, only to discover her entire village of Cinder grace has been burned to ash overnight. Everyone she loved is gone. The authorities call it a "tragic magical accident," but Elara knows better—someone wanted her village erased, and her along with it.
Branded as cursed and shunned by neighboring towns, Elara has lost everything: her home, her family, her identity, and most horrifyingly, all memories before the age of twelve. The gaps in her mind whisper of secrets someone desperately wanted buried.
Enter Vincent Ashwood—the devastatingly handsome noble who found her wandering the smoking ruins that morning. He offers shelter at his isolated mansion and claims he wants to help. But Vincent has secrets of his own, including why he was at Cindergrace before dawn, and why he looks at Elara like he's seeing a ghost.
Desperate for answers, Elara plunges into the criminal underworld of the Memory Market, where she encounters:
Raven, a notorious phantom thief who steals memories and wears a thousand faces, hiding a connection to Elara's forgotten past.
Sir Copperfield, a once-human knight cursed into a mechanical body, who serves a mysterious debt and speaks in riddles about "the girl who burned twice."
Marcus Thorne, a charming information broker with a devastating smile and a sister who vanished in similar circumstances.
As Elara hunts for her stolen memories, she uncovers a conspiracy that spans the highest echelons of power. Her village wasn't destroyed by accident—it was a targeted execution to eliminate the last living heir of the Phoenix bloodline, a royal family that once ruled with fire magic before being overthrew in a brutal coup twenty years ago.
But here's the twist: Elara didn't just survive the massacre. She caused it. Her awakening Phoenix magic consumed everything in a explosion of flame she can't remember. And the reason Vincent saved her? He's the son of the very family that ordered her bloodline's extinction—and he's been hiding her from his own mother, the Queen, who will stop at nothing to finish what she started.
As Elara's powers awaken and passion ignites between her and the enemy prince sworn to protect her, she must decide: seek revenge on those who destroyed her family, or forge a new future with the man who should have been her destroyer.
One thing is certain: the girl who rose from the ashes remembers nothing. But fire? Fire never forgets.
