Servant of Earth

In the underground Fae realm, only the strongest and most ruthless have power — but a young human woman forced into a life of servitude is about to change that.

Kenna Heron is best known in her village for being a little wild; some say half feral. She will need every ounce of that ferocity to survive captivity in the cruel Fae court. Trapped as a servant in the faeries' underground kingdom of Mistei, Kenna must help her new mistress undertake six deadly trials, one for each branch of magic: Fire, Earth, Light, Void, Illusion and Blood. If her mistress succeeds, she gains immortality and becomes heir to Earth House. If she fails, the punishment is death — for mistress and servant alike.

With no ally but a sentient dagger of mysterious origins, Kenna faces monsters, magic and gruelling physical tests. But the worse dangers are political. She is soon caught up in a secret rebellion against the inventively sadistic King Osric, and when her feelings for the rebellion's leader — Prince Drustan of Fire House — turn passionate, she has to decide whether she is willing to risk her life for a better world and a chance at happiness.

The first book in Sarah Hawley's Shards of Magic trilogy: a dark fae romantasy that is genuinely dark, with on-page torture and cruelty alongside the open-door romance, and which spends as much of its heart on the friendships between the women in the trials as on the love story.