Heartwood and Steel

A Sapphic Enemies to Lovers Forced Proximity Romantasy

By: Samantha Rose

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Empire that burned my home to ash conscripted me to chart its next conquest. Now, I'm chained to the one woman who wants me dead.

My name is Leah, and I am a cartographer of a dying world. My skill with a map is the only thing keeping me alive, a tool I'm forced to use for the very Iron Empire that slaughtered my people. My latest assignment is a death sentence: map the Whispering Weald, a sentient forest that has consumed every soul sent into it.

I was prepared for the shifting paths and the corrupted beasts. I wasn't prepared for her.

Sylvana is the forest's guardian, an ancient and terrifyingly powerful Hamadryad who sees all of humanity as a plague. She is a creature of bark and fury, of deep roots and an even deeper grief, and I am the embodiment of the steel and rot that destroyed her world.

One desperate act of survival, one blast of forbidden magic, and now we're bound. An unbreakable, agonizing tether connects us, soul to soul. She is my captor in a prison of leaves, and her pain is my pain. Her ancient, crushing loneliness seeps into my veins, and my stubborn will to live grates against her millennia of despair.

But the forest is dying from a poison of the Empire's making, and the ruthless commander who sent me here is coming to burn what's left. He wants her heartwood for fuel and my head for treason. To survive, we'll have to trust each other.

I am her enemy. Her prisoner. The last person she should ever let near her heartwood. So why does the warmth of her bark-like skin feel more like home than anything I've ever known? The line between hatred and desire thins with every shared memory, every desperate touch in the dark.

Perfect for fans of epic romantasy with high stakes and deep emotional connection, Heartwood and Steel is a standalone sapphic fantasy romance packed with your favorite tropes. If you love a powerful enemies-to-lovers story, forced proximity, grumpy x sunshine dynamics, and a slow-burn romance with deep emotional intimacy and sensual moments, you’ll be captivated... by this tale of a dying world and the two women who will risk everything to save it.

Repetitive and not well defined

The idea was interesting, but language was repetitive with little character development along the way and no real wrap up to the main characters story, AI voice is just always terrible, not the authors fault there.