Runebound

~ Literary Titan Gold Book Award Winner ~ ~ A 5-Star Rating from Readers' Favorite ~ ~ A 5-Star Rating from Literary Titan ~ ~ A 5-Star Rating from Reedsy Discovery ~ Milena of Mecklenburg was raised to honor duty above all else. But fate had other plans. Born into a Christian court that has abandoned the old gods in favor of the Church and promised to a Saxon noble to secure her father's rule, she is expected to submit without question, even as the remnants of the pagan North still breathe beneath the surface. Haunted by prophetic dreams and guided by intuition, Milena receives a rune long destined for her. Its ancient power awakens something in her that does not belong to the world she knows. When Norse traders arrive to barter with her father, she is introduced to another way of being and encounters a young warrior who threatens everything her father has built on buried grief, shame, and regret. To choose her own path means betraying her family, her faith, and the fragile order that holds her world together. And once she begins, there will be no turning back. Runebound is a richly grounded historical fiction with subtle fantasy elements and a thread of romantic tension, set in the twelfth century, where the old gods endure in the shadow of the rising Cross. It is a tale of love, destiny, forbidden belief, and awakening power for readers drawn to mythic, folkloric stories in the tradition of The Bear and the Nightingale and Uprooted.