The Pale Court — Book 3.

Tom Whitefeld has a castle that does not leak. A pale tower the west was told was shuttered. A yard that checks even princesses. A hall that kneels when a living mouth says his name. He is still hers first. He is already being told to wear the lord in public and keep the fox off a guest’s tongue.

The house is his. The sister is not supposed to be in it.

An unmarked twin who packed favorite clothes and a splinter. A marked one who lives here, choker closed, scar in the light. Five handmaidens picked for beauty and willingness. A small tiger-kin with the wrong blue eyes. A human maid who folds her livery before she takes the bite. Rules spoken over wine: he will not change his ways, he will not make a wife of the perfect girl, he will never turn the throat the fox has forbidden.

He is told to be findable. To offer again. To teach sharing before the gown is gone. To keep the sun on a bite and call it proof he is not what the sermons named.

He is also told the morning has a carriage on it.

His girls from the other house. A talk that sits heavier than a sending. A mission he has not been given yet, past the Black Mountains, where the sun stays warm and a restless elven princess walks a deep lake and thinks a western scar is more beautiful than perfection.

And behind a cheap deadbolt that no longer has a girl to lock, a body is found quiet, because she already said yes in a dream and walked through the cut in her own air.

The Pale Court — Book 3 is a dark erotic gothic fantasy of titles that have to be verified at the gate, hunger that keeps a pulse, and the dangerous difference between a ring a king will demand and a law that does not change inside the walls. For readers who want their power explicit, their intimacy asked for, and their monsters beautiful enough to make a kingdom worse on purpose.

The courtyard is already protected. The fox is still first. And the road into the mountains only looks like a visit.