The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King

What's inside (8 sections)

1. A throne with no footing
2. The curse and the goddess
3. War with the Rishan and the Bloodborn
4. Oraya choice about turning
5. The trial of ashes
6. What worked and what tested me
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came to this one right after The Serpent and the Wings of Night, which left Oraya and Raihn in a rough place. The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King is book two in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, and the second part of the Nightborn duet. It came out first in 2023 self published, then in the Bramble hardcover in 2024 with 608 pages. If you have not read book one, stop and read that first. This book starts mid fallout and expects you to know who won the Kejari and what it cost.

Oraya is the human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king Vincent, raised among vampires who see her as food that talks. Raihn is the turned vampire from the streets who won the Kejari tournament to become king. At the end of book one, Vincent died, Oraya killed him to save Raihn in a way that still haunts her, and Raihn took the throne with Oraya at his side but not yet trusted. Now the kingdom doubts both of them.

A throne with no footing

The opening is all politics and hunger. Raihn sits the throne of the Night House, but the old blood families do not accept a turned king with a human consort. They call Oraya a pet. They call Raihn an accident. Council meetings drag. Tax grain rots while lords argue about rites. Soldiers loyal to Vincent dead generals watch from corners.

Oraya tries to act like a queen. She wears the dresses, learns the bows, sits through feasts where the food is blood wine she cannot drink. She trains every morning with a sword because that is the one language vampires respect. She is good, fast for a human, but every spar ends with a vampire holding back just enough to remind her.

Raihn tries to rule with mercy. He opens granaries, pardons low level rebels, invites turned vampires to court for the first time. The highborn take mercy as weakness. An assassination attempt comes within days, a knife in a hallway, poison in a cup. Raihn drinks the poison to prove a point and spends a night shaking while Oraya holds a basin. It is romantic and stupid, and both of them know it.

Their relationship strains under public eyes. In private they are tender. Raihn braids Oraya hair to calm himself. Oraya cleans Raihn wounds and teases him about kingly posture. In public they must be careful. A king who favors a human looks besotted. A human who orders vampires looks above herself. They fight about small things that are really about fear. Who stands where in processions. Who speaks first. Whether to smile at insulting lords.

I liked how Broadbent shows power as logistics. It is not speeches. It is who controls the blood supply, who guards the mountain passes, who pays the Rishan soldiers. Raihn spends chapters reading ledgers. Oraya spends chapters learning which servant carries messages for which lord. Victory in the tournament gave them a crown, not a government.

The curse and the goddess

The fantasy engine here is Nyaxia, the goddess of night, and her bargains. Raihn bears her mark. Oraya carries a different wound from Vincent death and from her own close brush with turning. Visions start. Ash, stars, a woman with black wings asking for payment.

Broadbent expands the magic. Highborn vampires draw from bloodlines tied to old houses. Turned vampires draw less cleanly and burn faster. Humans can use blood magic only through bonds or relics, at high cost. Oraya learns she has a tie to the goddess through death and choice, not birth. It does not make her strong. It makes her visible to things that eat the strong.

There is a temple sequence I enjoyed. Oraya goes with a priestess to an old shrine under the castle. The walls show Nyaxia making the first vampires from grief and hunger. The priestess asks Oraya what she would give for her people. Oraya says she would give her human life, but not Raihn. The goddess, if listening, does not answer in words. The candles go out. Oraya wakes with ash on her hands that will not wash for a day.

Raihn has his own rite. To secure the throne he must survive the Star Curse trial, a series of gates that test rule, sacrifice, and blood. Each gate takes him into a memory or a possible future. He sees himself as a street boy stealing bread. He sees himself killing Vincent again from another angle. He sees Oraya dying human and old while he stays young. He comes out each time quieter.

These trials could feel like filler. They do not, because each one forces a ruling choice after. After the gate of hunger, Raihn must decide whether to ration blood to soldiers or civilians during a shortage. After the gate of mercy, he must judge a lord who murdered a turned servant. Broadbent ties visions to policy, which keeps magic grounded.

War with the Rishan and the Bloodborn

The middle turns to war. The Rishan House, winged vampires who live in cliffs and value honor duels, refuse Raihn rule. Their leader, Cair, demands trial by combat and tribute. The Bloodborn, fleshy horrors twisted by old magic, push from the wastes and eat villages.

Oraya proves herself in the Rishan talks. She speaks their dialect badly, which they respect because she tries. She offers a duel she cannot win, then wins respect by lasting longer than expected and refusing to yield even with a broken rib. Cair laughs, calls her little queen, and agrees to a temporary truce for grain. It is not friendship. It is a pause.

The Bloodborn attack is written with horror detail. They come at night without torches, smelling of rot and old blood. They climb walls with too many joints. Oraya fights on a wall with a spear, shouting for oil. Raihn jumps from the parapet in half shifted form and tears through them. A young guard freezes. Oraya drags him down and slaps him awake. After, she vomits behind a barrel and goes back to giving orders. War does not make her glow. It makes her tired.

Supply lines matter. Chapters track wagons, snow, forged shoes for horses, blood stores kept cold in cellars. When a convoy is lost, the castle eats thin soup for a week. Oraya gives her portion to a kitchen girl and lies that she ate earlier. Raihn catches her and brings bread to their room without comment. These small domestic beats inside siege pressure kept me reading through strategy talk.

There is a betrayal that I half guessed. A Night House lord, Jesmine ally from book one, feeds information to the Rishan to force Raihn to step down. Oraya finds proof in a laundry list with coded marks. She confronts the lord alone, which is reckless, and nearly dies. Raihn arrives in time but cannot save her reputation. Lords whisper that the human queen needs rescue again.

Oraya choice about turning

The emotional core is whether Oraya should turn. As a human among vampires, she ages fast, bleeds easily, and cannot fully share Raihn life. Turning would make her strong, extend her life, and secure succession. It would also kill part of who she is and bind her to Nyaxia in ways she fears.

Raihn refuses to ask for it. He turned against his will as a boy and remembers the pain and the loss of taste, sun, and easy sleep. He says he will love her human and old. Oraya hears love and also hears a clock. She watches servant girls her age grow older in months of war stress and wonders how many years she has.

Broadbent handles this without easy answers. Friends split. A turned friend says turning saved her from illness and gave her work. A human servant says she likes her mortal life and gods. A priestess warns that turning for love often curdles into resentment when the human past fades. Oraya prays, trains, bleeds, decides, undecides.

I appreciated that the book does not treat turning as a romance upgrade. It is surgery, faith change, and citizenship change at once. Oraya asks practical questions. Will I still taste bread. Will I still dream the same. Will Vincent blood in my upbringing make my turning darker. No one can promise. That uncertainty feels honest for a big fantasy choice.

The slow burn romance stays slow. They sleep curled together, talk through plans, bathe wounds. Sex scenes are present but not constant, and they focus on trust more than spectacle. A scene where Raihn feeds carefully from Oraya wrist while asking permission each step, stopping when her pulse jumps, says more about consent than speeches. Readers who want constant steam may find it restrained. I found it fitting for two people under siege.

The trial of ashes

The climax returns to ritual. To end the curse and stop the Bloodborn source, Oraya and Raihn must enter the Ashes, a god place between life and death where Nyaxia waits. The rules are simple and cruel. Bring what you love most. Leave something behind.

They go together, which breaks custom. Inside, ash falls like snow. Stars show through black clouds. The dead walk, including Vincent. Oraya faces him. He does not apologize in a neat way. He says he raised her as a weapon and loved her as a daughter, and both can be true. She says she killed him to stop him and still misses his voice reading war reports. She leaves her childhood pendant, the one he gave her, on a stone. It burns without smoke.

Raihn faces his human self, the boy before turning. The boy asks why he gets to live as king when so many street kids died. Raihn has no good answer. He offers his crown name, the title Nightborn, and keeps the boy name for himself. It is symbolic, but Broadbent makes it hurt because Raihn knows titles do not feed the dead.

Nyaxia asks for payment. Not blood. Memory. To close the rift feeding the Bloodborn, one of them must give up their first meeting memory, the Kejari night that bound them. Oraya offers hers. Raihn refuses and offers his instead. They argue even before a goddess, which made me laugh wetly. In the end they split it. Each forgets a piece and keeps the feeling. They leave holding hands but unsure why they are crying.

After, the Bloodborn recede. The Rishan truce holds a little longer. The Night House lords bow a little lower. Nothing is solved forever. A god bargain never is. But the castle eats, the walls stand, and the king and his human queen walk out together into snow that feels clean for the first time.

What worked and what tested me

What worked was scale tied to intimacy. Big magic gates lead to small ruling choices. Battles lead to soup and bread scenes. Goddess bargains lead to forgetting a joke only they knew. Fantasy often loses people in lore. Here lore always lands on a body, a meal, a bed.

Raihn growth stood out. In book one he was charm and rage. Here he learns to sit through meetings, to listen to servants, to say no to revenge when yes would feel good. Oraya growth is steadier. She learns to ask for help without seeing it as weakness, to let guards guard her so she can do queen work only she can do.

What tested me was length. At 608 pages, the middle council and supply chapters repeat. How many times can lords sneer before we get it. I skimmed two feasts. The Rishan names blur. Cair, Mische, Jesmine, Lilith, Nyaxia. After a while I needed a list. The Bramble edition has no easy guide. I made my own on a scrap.

I also wanted more of Mische and the wider world. She appears, bright and loyal, then leaves for her own story. Readers who know the spin offs will enjoy the nod. New readers may wonder why a fun character vanishes.

Still, as a duet end, it satisfies. The couple earns a fragile peace. The kingdom is not healed, but it has a chance. The goddess is not defeated, but she is answered. I closed it tired in a good way, like after a long walk in cold air.

Content notes. There is war violence with blades, claws, and blood drinking, torture mention, assassination attempts, poison, grief over a parent death, body horror around turning and Bloodborn, consensual sexual content with blood play, and talk of famine and child hunger during siege. No graphic sexual assault on page, though past threats are discussed.

FAQ

Do I need to read book one first?

Read The Serpent and the Wings of Night first. This is book two and starts right after the Kejari win, Vincent death, and Raihn crowning.

Does Oraya become a vampire?

She weighs it through the book for strength and years with Raihn, but fears losing self and god ties. The choice is treated as costly change, not a simple upgrade.