PROJECT ACADIA
Progress
When machines threaten to replace magic, a wounded war hero and a brilliant inventor must risk everything to protect her exploited people—and each other.
Sergeant Major Acadia Rosewood ended the Second Trow War. She also paid dearly for it—her comrades lost, her leg and spirits crushed, her nights haunted by the things she cannot remember or forget.
Celebrated but estranged, Acadia returns to a society that sees Practitioners, like her, not as saviors, but as dangerous relics—blamed for the near collapse of a society they were forced to leave behind to protect the realm.
As compensation, the Queen grants Acadia a noble title and land—but only if she consents to a politically convenient marriage. Her reluctant match, Duke Greyson Brynn, is a reclusive metallurgist and inventor still grieving his own losses. What begins as a transaction slowly deepens into a fragile, tentative bond—one forged in shared grief, quiet admiration, and the slow unfurling of trust.
But as Grey’s experiments with magic-powered technology blur the line between progress and exploitation, Acadia must confront not only the ghosts of her past but the uneasy truth that peace may demand as much courage—and violence—as war ever did.
Torn between duty, desire, and the trauma of survival, Acadia must decide whether her new reality is worth becoming the weapon she once was.
Acadia’s journey draws from the lived experiences of six military women, myself included, who live with PTSD and other visible and invisible scars.