The Pale Court — Book 2.

Tom Whitefeld wears a title the west has not heard in years. A pale tower on a dark field. A late arrival. A baron who drinks the wine and keeps his head clear and smiles with his mouth closed when the wrong sister looks too long. He is a week old in the dark. He is still hers first. He is already being sent to steal a woman who wants eternity.

The hall is human. The mission is not.

A western king who does not sell his daughters to leaking towers. A queen who is still stunning enough to explain the twins. One marked. One not. The marked one does not trust wolves and is not convinced vampires are anything but a prettier kind of lie. She wants to live forever anyway. The unmarked one would put a scream in a guard’s throat and call it piety.

Tom is told to get close. To be a little rude. To offer forever only when she asks. To leave the sister alone.

He is also told the streets on the way home are not decoration.

Beast-kin in gutters. Chains used as furniture. Gold that would accept a change if the change came with a door instead of a line. Vespera does not pretend her house is a chapel. She will welcome what he walks toward. She will not forgive him if he takes what does not walk.

And somewhere that still has buses and cheap black sheets, a dream keeps knocking on a door he thought he closed when he died.

The Pale Court — Book 2 is a dark erotic gothic fantasy of titles that are costumes, hunger that keeps a pulse, and the dangerous difference between a key left in the dirt and a bite given in a clean room. For readers who want their power explicit, their intimacy asked for, and their monsters beautiful enough to make a kingdom worse on purpose.

The ball has already started. The fox is still first. And the road down the mountain only looks like a way home.