Fiction

Web Serial
Coming Winter 2019
A Flower With Thorns

Desperate and hiding a deadly secret, Seya isn’t expecting much when she returns to the city where she grew up, especially after finding out Halcyon, the magic school where she spent much of her childhood and her last, and only hope for help, is now in the hands of a stranger. But trouble is brewing in Starling, and after a run-in with a teenage delinquent with secrets in her own, she ends up tangled in it, all the while struggling with bonds old and new, the family she’s spent her life denying, and terrifying coercive magic. And it’s not just guilt and fear that’s keeping her from accepting the help of her former bond brother and Halcyon’s kind and gentle bondmaster. Her secrets destroyed the last place she thought she could stay, so how could she dare hope to have the comfort and solace they’re offering her?

Vico is at the end of his rope. The secrets and heartbreak he’s been carrying for the last year, after suffering a breakdown that ended his long, fraught relationship to the heir of the Malthusius—a clan that sees him as little more than a whipping post courtesy of the Sancerre blood that runs in his veins. But he can’t bring himself to cut his last tie to the man he still loves, even though it seems impossible that he’ll ever get what he wants. When the bond sister who shattered his heart a decade ago returns, he finds himself hoping again, though it will take all his guile to maneuver deadly curses, the politics of his clan, and the secrets he fears Seya is hiding.