Hearts of Bark and Scale

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The world is blood and pain but still there's love.</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>All Kvisti has ever wanted is to protect her desert village in a way that would make the Mother Tree proud. Unfortunately an old injury has left her once-potent dryad powers broken and she can't even stop the ruthless magic poachers that invade her village for the scraps of magic she still holds.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Snake shifter Iason is bound to a criminal snake den for the sake of his rare healing magic. But the magic poachers want his magic too. When the poachers throw Kvisti in the same magic-proof cell as Iason the two are inexorably drawn together bonding over past traumas. In their isolation they begin to heal each other finding a connection deeper than they imagined possible.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>But when disaster strikes the poachers Kvisti and Iason are abandoned in their cell with no hope for freedom.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In a world that thrives on cruelty and despair love may be their only salvation. Can Kvisti and Iason break free of their prison and the pasts that haunt them before their connection is torn apart? Will the delicate new feelings taking root in their hearts bloom or will the desert bury them? When blood and pain are a constant love is a fragile thing-but one worth fighting for.</span></p><p></p>