Carissa Broadbent’s Mother of Death and Dawn is the third and final installment in The War of Lost Hearts trilogy. Originally self-published in 2022, the novel was reissued in 2026 by Bramble, an imprint of Tor Publishing Group, after the author gained widespread popularity. The novel is a work of romantasy, a subgenre that combines the epic scale and intricate world-building of high fantasy with a central romantic plot. In a world torn apart by war between an enslaving human empire, a militaristic island nation, and an ancient race of immortal Fey, the rebel leader Tisaanah seeks to free her people. Her quest becomes inseparable from her desperate attempts to rescue her lover, Max, an amnesiac former soldier locked in a magical prison.

Author Carissa Broadbent is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who rose to prominence as a self-published writer, achieving viral success on social media platforms like TikTok with her Crowns of Nyaxia series. Mother of Death and Dawn brings the central conflicts of its series to a dramatic conclusion, weaving together large-scale political intrigue and battlefield clashes with intimate character journeys. The novel explores themes of Love as a Catalyst for Resistance and Sacrifice, The Painful Reclamation of a Fractured Identity, and The Moral Ambiguity of Vengeance.

This guide refers to the 2026 Bramble e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, physical abuse, sexual violence, sexual content, substance use, addiction, and death.

Plot Summary

The third and final installment of the series opens in a world fractured by overlapping conflicts. The Fey, an ancient, near-immortal race led by King Caduan Iero, have allied with the human Threllian Lords, an oligarchy ruling an empire of conquered nations fueled by enslaved labor. Together, the Fey and the Threllians wage war against the rest of humanity. Queen Nura of Ara, a militaristic island nation, fights the Fey with increasing desperation and unscrupulousness, performing cruel experiments on both humans and captured Fey in an attempt to gain an advantage. Caught between these powers are formerly enslaved people who have launched a rebellion under Tisaanah Vytezic, a young woman with rare magic and a personal history of enslavement.

Tisaanah infiltrates a Threllian estate disguised as an enslaved servant, seeking a mysterious artifact the Fey king wants. When she touches the artifact, a glass orb, it absorbs into her hand, leaving gold markings across her palm. Her disguise fails, and her Fey ally Ishqa, a former advisor to Caduan who defected to help the rebels, flies her to safety after a violent escape in which a fellow enslaved woman is killed by the Zorokovs, a Threllian family of powerful enslavers who have murdered hundreds of innocents as retribution against Tisaanah.

The narrative shifts to the perspective of Tisaanah’s lover, Maxantarius “Max” Farlione, a powerful magic Wielder from the Solarie people. Max languishes in Ilyzath, an ancient semi-sentient prison off Ara’s coast that torments inmates with hallucinations. His memories have been almost entirely erased, and Queen Nura pulls him out for painful experiments, hoping to weaponize his suppressed power. His body is covered in Stratagram tattoos, magical bindings inked into skin to suppress a Wielder’s abilities.

A third perspective belongs to Aefe, formerly known as Reshaye, a disembodied Fey consciousness exploited as a weapon by human magic-wielders for 500 years. Caduan has restored her to a physical body using forbidden magic, but she is deeply traumatized. His advisors pressure him to weaponize her, but Caduan refuses, insisting she deserves a life free of exploitation.

Ishqa identifies the stolen artifact as a wayfinder, a key to the Lejaras: three mythical pools of deep magic so powerful that, used together, they could reshape reality. Caduan orders his forces to recover it, while Tisaanah privately realizes that a Lejara might be powerful enough to break Max out of prison. She heads north with Ishqa and Sammerin Imat, Max’s closest friend and a healer traveling with the rebels.

A cataclysmic disturbance shakes the deep layers of magic. Max negotiates with Ilyzath itself: The prison releases him in exchange for a mark burned into his palm and a promise to return. His estranged older brother Brayan waits with a boat, and they escape together, though Max’s memories remain fractured. He learns that his family was murdered during a civil war and that Brayan once found him addicted to the magical drug Seveseed and unwilling to be rescued.

In the Fey capital of Ela’Dar, Caduan teaches Aefe to discover her own magic. After days of failure, she feels her own heartbeat and creates a tiny black rosebud, the first thing she has ever made from her own power.

Max and Brayan are captured by Aran soldiers. Tisaanah orchestrates a rescue, deliberately getting captured to create a diversion while the others escape. When the group reunites, Tisaanah discovers that Max does not remember her at all. Despite this, he feels an inexplicable connection and refuses to leave. At the hidden city of Zagos, a Wielder partially restores Max’s fire abilities by breaking his Stratagram bindings, but repairing the deeper entanglement between his and Tisaanah’s powers proves impossible: Max cannot breach the mental wall guarding his most traumatic memories.

Caduan, pressured by the Threllians, leads Fey forces in a devastating assault on the rebel strongholds. Aefe witnesses mass executions and is disturbed by the killing’s cold efficiency. Learning of the siege, Tisaanah insists Max leave with Brayan for safety, privately believing his amnesia is a mercy that spared him from reliving his trauma in Ilyzath. At their parting, Max begs her to ask him to stay. She tells him to go.

Walking away, Max draws the shapes he has compulsively etched for months and recognizes them as the distinctive patches of Tisaanah’s Fragmented skin—the contrasting pale and tan markings of her mixed heritage, with pale patches marking her as part of the Valtain order of magic users. He turns back immediately. Meanwhile, Tisaanah is captured by Zorokov-allied enslavers. She plants a Zorokov armband on the wounded Sammerin as a message: She wants not a rescue but an army. Max rallies the rebel leadership at Orasiev, the last standing rebel city, for an all-out offensive.

In captivity, Tisaanah endures torture but hides her remaining magic, covertly recruiting enslaved people to join her rebellion. The Fey and rebel armies converge on the Zorokov estate simultaneously: Max’s forces from the west, Caduan’s from the east. Tisaanah reveals that the enslaved rebels have disabled the guards. In the chaos, she and Aefe confront each other before Max intervenes, and Tisaanah and Max use a Lejara, the petrified heart of change, to raise massive stone walls separating the combatants and protecting fleeing enslaved people. Both armies retreat. Tisaanah nearly burns Lady Zorokov alive in retribution for all the suffering she has caused, but Max reminds her of her moral identity, and she instead kills Lady Zorokov quickly by breaking her neck. She proposes that the former Threllian nations unify as the Alliance of Seven Banners.

The Lejara’s power shatters the final wall in Max’s mind, fully restoring his memories. He confesses to Brayan that Reshaye killed their family while controlling his body, and that he was conscious for every death. Brayan departs, unable to forgive him. Tisaanah proposes marriage, and Max accepts.

Aefe and Caduan become lovers, but he reveals he has possessed a Lejara all along: The creation magic that forged her body is killing him, his body covered in spreading black veins. Nura escapes captivity, steals the creation Lejara, and reanimates the dead across Ela’Dar. Aefe, devastated by Caduan’s deception, flees to the ruins of her ancestral home. She later returns and kills Ishqa to fulfill her centuries-old desire for vengeance, but she feels only emptiness.

Nura sends Ishqa’s reanimated corpse carrying explosives to the Towers of Ara. The detonation destroys both Towers and shatters the petrified heart into volatile shards. Red smoke rises from the ruins, visible wounds in the fabric of magic itself. Nura then arrives at Ara with an armada crewed by reanimated corpses. Max stabs Nura during a parley, but as she dies, she activates her Lejara in a devastating explosion before Tisaanah teleports them to safety. In Ara, Max is formally named Arch Commandant, replacing Nura, and addresses the devastated populace, asking them to fight not for glory but for a better tomorrow.

The wayfinder points to Ilyzath as the location of the third Lejara: death. Max and Tisaanah enter together, each facing personalized psychological torment. Caduan wounds Max and takes the creation Lejara. Tisaanah carries the bleeding Max toward the deepest chamber, where a glowing sapling cycles endlessly through death and rebirth.

Aefe follows Caduan to Ilyzath and finds Tisaanah shielding the dying Max. Tisaanah opens her mind to Aefe, revealing that beneath Aefe’s rage lies love and a desperate desire to save Caduan. Tisaanah presses the broken shards of the change Lejara into Aefe’s hands: Caduan’s actions will destroy everything, and Aefe must end it.

Beneath the death tree, the three Lejaras align and pull Aefe and Caduan into the deepest layer of magic, where tears in reality threaten to devour the world. Caduan wants vengeance, but Aefe forces him to see the consequences: their homeland crumbling, eternity itself falling to dust. Sealing the deep magic will erase everything it created, including Aefe’s body. She accepts, saying they will die together. They stitch the world’s wounds closed, sacrificing themselves, while Tisaanah and Max contribute their remaining power to complete the seal.

Nura’s army vanishes. The Fey accept a ceasefire. Max and Tisaanah awaken on Ilyzath’s shore, now inert stone, and watch the Alliance’s painted ships on the horizon. In the years that follow, Max disbands the corrupt military Orders and founds a school for magic-wielders. Tisaanah establishes a global guild. They negotiate peace with Meajqa Sai’Ess, Caduan’s former second-in-command and the new Fey leader, marry in a small ceremony, and raise two children, haunted by their pasts but choosing hope and each other every day.