Kyrene is not an easy heroine to love. She is raw, angry, reckless to the point of self-destruction, and completely convinced that vengeance is the only thing left worth living for. I found her frustrating at times, and I mean that as a compliment. She grows through the story, slowly and painfully, and the woman she becomes by the final chapters is earned. Septimus, meanwhile, is everything I wanted him to be since his first appearance in The Serpent and the Wings of Night: gorgeous, cunning, devastatingly charming, and hiding a softness he would rather die than admit to.

The romance is a slow burn in the truest sense. For most of the book, Kyrene and Septimus circle each other like predators, and the forced proximity of their mission means every moment together crackles with tension. Broadbent balances the banter with moments of startling tenderness, and when the story finally gives in to the attraction, it feels earned. The plot itself never loses momentum: a war against the gods, a sentient sword with a personality disorder, prophecies, curses, and a final act that rewrites everything I thought I knew. If you loved The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, this is the next chapter you have been waiting for.

It is not a perfect book. It is longer than it strictly needs to be, and Kyrene's internal monologue gets repetitive in the middle stretch. But the ambition is staggering, and the ending, brutal as it is, lands with the weight of an entire series behind it. This is the penultimate chapter of Nyaxia, and it sets up what promises to be an unforgettable finale. I finished it gutted, thrilled, and already counting the days until book six.