Every Cinder in Cyr Veyr bowed to her. Except the one bound to him.

Merren is an ash-medic who trusts evidence, not gods. She comes to the capital searching for the cause of a deadly pattern among patients and bonded Cinders. Instead, she becomes the center of an impossible event—and a threat to every institution built on controlling the bond.

Commander Kael Veyr has spent his life enforcing the Crown's order. Now he must contain Merren, protect her from the Church, and confront the machinery that made his authority possible. Keeping her alive demands his complicity. Earning even temporary trust demands that he surrender control.

As bodies fail, records disappear, and the Crown closes its grip, Merren and Kael uncover evidence of something deliberately erased. Attraction grows between them in the one place consent cannot be assumed—and where trust may be more dangerous than betrayal.

To survive, they must expose what the kingdom buried without becoming another thing it owns.

The Gods We Refuse is Book One of The Cinderbound Cycle, an adult slow-burn romantasy of sentient magical bonds, institutional power, costly choices, and a romance that does not confuse desire with forgiveness.