Three Weeks With My Rival

“Two rival engineers have three weeks to span the only crossing over the frozen river before war drags them both into the gorge.”

When an early thaw destroys the royal viaduct between the kingdoms of Alden and Veradia, the chancellery appoints two rival engineers to design an articulated iron bridge across the Needles gorge: Kaelen, the cold calculator from the northern academy who trusts nothing but the strength of materials, and Lyra, the head stonemason who knows the hidden faults of the living rock. Forced to share the drafting hut while the river roars three hundred metres below and winter melts beneath the load-bearing piers, every red-ink correction on the plans becomes a duel of wills in which admitting the other is right is more dangerous than the fall into the torrent.