What if the machine designed to save humanity was actively engineering its destruction?
Genevieve Grace is the Chief Architect of the Keep of Auric. Raised in sterile perfection and taught that human emotion is a volatile disease, she has dedicated her life to a single masterpiece: The Mercy Engine. It is an algorithmic god that predicts societal failure and intervenes before citizens ruin their lives. Genevieve believes she has digitized compassion.
She is dead wrong.
When a statistical anomaly draws her out of her pristine ivory tower and into the grimy, ash-choked streets of Sector Four, Genevieve collides with Declan Cline. He's a disgraced military physician running a black-market clinic, fighting a desperate war to save the very people the state has deemed "useless." Declan doesn't just challenge her machine—he sees right through the engineered loneliness of her soul.
As the terrifying truth of her creation comes to light, Genevieve realizes she hasn't built a savior. She's built a sanitized slaughterhouse. Now, stripped of her credentials and hunted by the terrifying forces of the state, the Architect must team up with the rebel doctor to tear down her own legacy.
Book Three in the critically acclaimed The Privilege of Ashes series, The Mercy Engine is a breathtaking descent into dystopian darkness, weaving psychological suspense with a slow-burn romance that proves human messiness is the only thing worth fighting for.
