E.V. Marren

He built a revolution in the dark. Now the man sent to destroy it might be the one person who truly sees him.

In the smoke-choked industrial city of Vael Morath, knowledge can kill you. The Seven Ministries control every whisper of truth, and those who defy them are restructured—their memories surgically erased, their identities rewritten.

Edric Ashgrove has perfected the art of invisibility. By day, a forgettable junior archivist. By night, the Lamplighter—anonymous founder of a clandestine network smuggling forbidden knowledge through flooded tunnels and coded candlelight. He has hidden everything: his illegal organization, his forbidden power, and the fact that he desires men in a world that classifies desire as a disease.

When Senior Censor Thessaly Vane is embedded in Edric's archive to hunt the network, Edric prepares for a chess match—not for the devastating gravity between two men who recognize each other's masks.

As an ancient horror stirs beneath the city and Thessaly's investigation tightens, Edric must choose: remain hidden and watch everything he's built be dismantled, or be seen—and risk destruction.