Standalone Romantasy
What the Light Takes
A Spellbinding Fantasy Romance of Shadow Magic, Forbidden Bonds, and Sacrifice
Available Now
RomantasyGaslampLow-Tech FantasyPolitical FantasyLight/Dark DualityDuty vs. DesireStar-Crossed LoversForbidden Romance
A shadow courier survives by one rule: deliver the message, never become part of the story.
Wren has spent her life carrying secrets through a kingdom where light is controlled, dusk is precious, and magic always demands a price. She knows how to outrun danger, evade politics, and keep her heart locked behind iron discipline.
Then a delivery goes wrong.
A single message binds her fate to Kael, a man tied to an ancient power older than the kingdom itself. Their connection should not exist. It should be impossible.
Yet with every passing day, the bond between them grows stronger.
As political factions battle for control and long-buried truths threaten to unravel the foundations of the realm, Wren and Kael discover they are standing at the center of a conspiracy centuries in the making.
To save the kingdom, they may have to break the oldest contract ever written.
But some bargains demand more than magic. They demand everything.
Filled with slow-burn romance, dangerous secrets, found family, court intrigue, emotional devastation, and a breathtaking magical bond, What the Light Takes is a spellbinding romantasy about sacrifice, hope, and the courage to choose love when the world is determined to take it away.
Coming soon to Google Books and Spotify.
Content warning: this book contains themes of state violence, off-page past child trafficking, and progressive memory loss.
An Excerpt
The Knock at Blue Hour
The knock came at the blue hour, which meant money.
Wren Ashcombe knew the sound of every kind of knock the Duskguild used. Two raps meant guild business, official and dull. A scratch meant trouble, come armed. A single knock, soft, patient, delivered exactly at the moment the lamplighters gave up on the day, meant a client who understood how couriers worked and was willing to pay for the understanding.
She let it sit for a ten-count. Never open eager. Eagerness was a discount you handed over before the haggling started.
The back room of the Grey Lantern smelled of tallow and wet wool, and the single window had been painted over years ago, which was the point. Shadewalkers preferred rooms where the light could be argued with. Wren stood, rolled her shoulders once, and lifted the latch.
The man in the doorway wore a mask.
Not a festival mask, not the cheap paper kind the river kids sold at solstice. This was fitted leather, dark as a closed eye, covering him from brow to lip. Below it, a mouth that had decided on its expression before knocking and was holding the line. Good coat, wrong for the district. Gloves in summer. Everything about him said money trying not to say money, which was its own kind of shouting.
“Ashcombe,” he said. Not a question.
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Someone who was told you’re the best shadewalking courier in Umbermouth and has no time to be told twice.”
Wren stepped back and let him in, because flattery was free but the door was drafty. She took her chair, the one with its back to the painted window, and left him the stool. He looked at the stool the way a man looks at a horse he’s been assured is gentle. Then he sat, and she gave him a point for that. Most of his sort stood and loomed. Looming cost extra.
“Delivery,” he said. “One letter. One recipient. No copies, no reading, no questions.”
“That’s four things, and you’ve already broken the third one by assuming I’d read it.” She put her boots up on the table’s crossbar. “The Duskguild oath covers the seal. You want it covered twice, that’s a rider, and riders cost.”
“I’ll pay the rider.”
Too fast. Wren kept her face flat, the way Bram had taught her before she’d lost her milk teeth. When they agree quick, girl, the price was wrong or the job is. Find out which before you shake on anything.
Continue reading in the full book.