She’ll bleed for one wish. He was built to make sure no one ever wins it.

In the poisoned slums known as the Slags, rust gets into everything—the pipes, the air, the blood. Kaia has watched it hollow out her little sister from the inside, turning veins to metal while the rich in their floating Chrome City drink a miracle Elixir that never reaches the ground.

Once a year, the Crown offers the poorest a single, impossible mercy: survive the Iron Trials and earn one wish. Food for a village. Freedom from the Slags. A cure for the Rust.

Nobody from below has ever come home.

Kaia doesn’t care. She’ll enter the arena, face monsters made of steel and magic, and fight other desperate contenders under the glow of the king’s Throne—because losing means watching her sister die.

High above the blood-soaked sand, Prince Dorian is already half machine. Grafted with living metal, raised to be the king’s perfect weapon, he’s spent his life enforcing a system he secretly despises. His job is simple: keep the Trials under control, keep the crowds entertained, and make sure the wish never truly threatens the Crown.

Then a furious girl from the Slags refuses to die on schedule.

When Kaia’s defiance throws the arena into chaos, Dorian is forced to step down from the royal box and into the sand. Their collision sparks a dangerous connection—part hatred, part reluctant fascination—that neither can afford. Because the Rust eating Kaia’s world is not a disease at all, and the Throne his father sits on is hungrier than anyone knows.

To save her sister, Kaia may have to trust the prince she should want dead.
To destroy the Crown, Dorian may have to betray the only family he’s ever had.

Together, they can tear down the sky city that feeds on their people…
Or the Crown of Rust will claim them both.

The Crown of Rust is the first book in a dark romantasy series filled with:

• Deadly, televised trials and a rigged wish

• A rust-and-metal “magic” system with a sinister secret

• A morally gray, cybernetically enhanced prince

• A fierce, desperate heroine who will burn an empire for her sister

• Slow-burn, enemies-to-allies romance against a dystopian backdrop

Perfect for readers of Fourth Wing, Red Rising, and The Hunger Games who crave high stakes, brutal worlds, and a love sharp enough to cut through steel.