Mine by V.A. Vance

In the furnace of a burning Queensland summer, Nerida Carroll is no stranger to protest lines. A sharp-tongued Wiradjuri activist with ochre-stained signs and courtroom arguments for weapons, she knows how to hold her ground against governments, corporations, and the creeping silence of despair.

But when a coal and gas giant pushes deeper into Gomeroi Country, Nerida finds herself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Mali Crowe—a defiant frontline warrior whose name she’s seen etched into court filings, protest bulletins, and whispered stories of reckless bravery. He’s fire in human form: uncompromising, relentless, dangerous in the way gravity is dangerous. And when their eyes lock across a crowd in King George Square, Nerida realises she’s just stepped into a battle that’s as personal as it is political.

From Brisbane marches to remote ridge camps, their fight is waged against bulldozers, drones, and police lines—but also within themselves. The heat between them is combustible, forged in chants and handcuffs, in stolen moments under the Milky Way and breathless encounters pressed against brick and stone. Desire becomes another protest, urgent and unyielding, blurring the line between survival and surrender.

But the frontline is merciless. Convoys roll, injunctions loom, and every choice carries risk: to Country, to comrades, and to the fragile trust forming between two people who swore they wouldn’t bend. As machines advance on the ridge and the state tightens its grip, Nerida and Mali must decide what it means to fight—together.

Raw, political, and unapologetically intimate, this is a story about love as resistance, protest as prayer, and the dangerous, beautiful fire that burns when two uncompromising souls collide.