Blood & Iron (Volume II of the Unity Saga)

Three thousand years ago the Angels came in flame and broke the world. The question they left behind has never been answered, only deferred: who decides which lives are worth saving?

Everyone is about to give their answer.

The Granblue Security Service came in the night and dragged Rose Tharnen, the Bloody Rose, back to the gilded cage she fled at the end of the war — where Azelea Morcant, commander of the Veiled Garden, wants her dead, and the law is on Azelea's side.  They didn't reckon with Rose's husband.

Joseph Tharnen told his wife she would never be alone. Then his enemies took his Rose. He has never been a man who breaks his word — but he is a man who will burn the world if it stands in his way.

Chained beside Rose is Marigold Rowan, her oldest friend, quietly weighing whether leaving Azelea alive is worth the cleaning bill she'll have to pay.

The youngest Tharnen has his own road to walk. MacKenzie — the Reaper and the Bloody Rose's boy — goes down into Durleigh's underworld with a steel rod on his hip and an elf at either shoulder. Everyone else in his family is a legend; Mac is fairly sure they ran out before they got to him. The two elves who crossed centuries to stand beside him would tell him otherwise — if he ever thought to ask. What they wrestle with is how much of the truth to say, and to whom. All they know for certain is that it will take faith to follow God's Hammer into the dark again.

His siblings are already moving. Joe Tharnen Junior is a master trader, but with his parents missing he'll let his crossbow negotiate instead. Captain Mercedes Tharnen, the best the Raleigh Rangers have, won't let a little thing like being alone deep in enemy country stand in her way — even if the enemy is Michael Garland, Security Service Agent. Others are pulled in beside them: Paladin Inez Martinez, who never once counted the cost of her vows, now called to save the world just as Joe enters her life and the bill comes due; and Prelate Dorrin Ybarra, the most pious man the Order has, forced to weigh those vows against the one Valkyrie he has never been able to stop loving.

Far to the west, Alric Rusk survived the wounds Joseph gave him, and carries the truth the Church has spent three thousand years burying. He preaches the very freedom everyone has bled for — hollowed out and refitted for conquest. Liberation that asks no one's consent. Paid for with however many lives the arithmetic demands.

And behind it all, the true masters of this world watch, and draw their plans against them.

Blood & Iron is the next volume of the Unity Saga — a sweeping, character-driven epic of love, freedom, and the cost of power, set in a post-technological world where ancient science is mistaken for magic, and forbidden. For fans of Dune, The Book of Eli, and Outlander.

Every fire begins with a spark. The whole world is dry tinder, and now the match has been struck.

The amazing cover for Blood & Iron was created by the talented Mary Clifford. You can find her on Instagram at mj0275038 or on email at [email protected].

≋ © 2026 J.A. Davidson | Blood & Iron ≋

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