Melting the Ice Queen

The epic conclusion of the Queens of Villainy series, featuring an ice queen's marriage of convenience to the fiery high priestess...and their kingdoms will never be the same again. Queen Ailana of Nornne is famous for her magical powers over ice and snow and her equally frosty self-control. The head of a powerful spy network and the guiding force behind the Queens of Villainy, she makes every decision based on cool and unemotional calculations... Including marriage to a woman she strongly suspects of keeping dangerous secrets. Hot-headed High Priestess Clothilde has been under the brutal control of her brother Otto, the Emperor of the Serafin Empire. But behind the smile she's been forced to wear in public, a fiery passion for justice has been building-and an equally hot passion for Ailana herself. Clothilde proposes a marriage of convenience in their shared efforts to bring down her brother, but she's determined to melt all of Ailana's walls of ice, because Clothilde has been keeping another secret, too. The gods of the Imperial Pantheon have been speaking to her for years, and they've gifted her with two world-shaking truths: Ailana is her destined true love...and if the two wives don't find a way to work together as equals, side by side with their fellow Queens of Villainy, a storm of war and blood will leave all of their futures in ruins.

Stephanie Burgis is a dual citizen of the US and the UK and lives in South Wales (land of dragons) with her husband, the author Patrick Samphire, and their children. The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart is Stephanie's first (delicious) novel for Bloombsury.