A Promise Worth a Thousand Deaths by H.G. Muralee

Akash Mahendra will stop at nothing to save his province.

House Mahendra is caught in the crossfire of war—craters litter their fields, citizens flee. As his father steps back, Akash must forge alliances to save his people.

Arcania Leigh-Van will do anything to get what she wants.

House Leigh-Van is wealthy and safe, its priority arranging Arcania’s marriage. She has her pick of suitors, but the one she wants believes them ill-matched.

Akash has known Arcania since childhood and doesn’t trust himself to provide for her in his war-torn province. He wants to shield her from it; she insists he deserves to prosper, and means to help him however she can.

As rebellion stirs, Akash weighs his morals against his people’s future, while Arcania questions her loyalty to the king she’s always called family. Caught between war and rebellion, they make a fateful promise.

What is a promise worth?

Twenty years of war have exhausted soldiers, civilians, and nobles alike. Towns grow more desolate while war technology advances, leaving the rest of Kaier behind.

Felix—heir to House Leigh-Van—resents the war that claimed his sister's life and his father's ethics. Still, he follows orders and is content to remain equal among his fellow soldiers.

When a routine repair stop puts Felix at the center of a brutal attack on civilians rather than soldiers, he struggles to keep separating his ethics from his duty. He's privately ambivalent but publicly supportive of his uncle, the king, as whispers of an underground rebellion begin to circulate—one gaining enough traction to make a real play at ending the war.

But when the resistance's own tactics start claiming lives as fast as the war itself, Felix begins to wonder who will survive to see the peace they're fighting for.