Light Wielder

Four years after her betrayal fractured her bond with Acker, Jovie rules Maile as its queen. Taking King Edmond's magic ended one fight and started a bigger one. Now five kingdoms, Kenta, Roison, Maile, Strou and Alaha, are at war. Jovie spends her days protecting Maile's people from the fallout. She also fights down the Matching Bond that still ties her to Acker, who slips into her dreams uninvited.

Acker is trapped in a war of his own. He is bound to an arranged marriage and to his tyrant father's throne, and he cannot stop thinking about the woman who left him. When he learns what his father did to restore his own magic, and the alliance forming behind it, he has to choose between his crown and Jovie.

Light Wielder is the second book in Rachel Schneider's Fire and Metal series, a romantasy told in dual point of view between Jovie and Acker. It carries an enemies-to-lovers pair into fated-mates territory, with political scheming and battlefield stakes weighing as much as the romance. The tone runs angsty, built on longing kept just out of reach rather than resolved.

Readers who liked the tension of Metal Slinger should expect a book about consequences: two people who already hurt each other, pulled back into the same war.