The Book of Stolen Years: A Slow-Burn Enemies-to-Lovers - Dark Romantasy - Fantasy Romance - Touch her and die by V.A. Ashbourne

Every touch costs a year of her life. He has already taken one. Mara Vey cancels the dead. A clerk of the Black Archive, she strikes finished names from the Book of Years — the royal ledger that decides how long every subject of Vaelor gets to live. Four thousand names, and she has never broken a rule. Then the Book orders her to erase three hundred children. Mara forges the page. The children live. Thirty-two nobles die at the queen's banquet with stolen years still in their cups, and by midnight the Crown has sent its Collector to bring her in. Riven Varley has no birth record and no death date. Every year the Crown takes passes through his bare hands, and his touch collects on contact. What Mara receives in exchange is stranger than the theft: his memories. The first one shows her something the Crown has killed to keep buried. Hunted through a city that sells lifetimes in glass vials, they need each other — the clerk who can read what was erased, and the executioner who helped write it. So she sets the terms. He keeps his gloves on. And every inch they close between them has a price she can count in heartbeats. Wanting him is simple. Affording him is another matter. A standalone adult dark romantasy: slow-burn enemies to lovers, a morally gray executioner with a ledger of his own sins, a gothic court built on stolen time, and a forbidden touch that always, always collects. Complete story, no cliffhanger. Read more