Dark Fantasy Romance · One world, three ages, nine books

The Hollow Rite

From the first bond the realm ever knew to the black sand of the Choosing.

In a kingdom held together by ward-stones and lies

The Rite asks for the truest thing you carry.

Wren has spent ten years being no one, and the plan is simple: tell a small truth, bind the dullest beast in the pens, and climb out of the pit as forgettable as she went in.

Then the forbidden beast the crown keeps caged beneath the arena tears through its wall for her and binds her in front of a thousand witnesses.

Now the most dangerous creature in the realm is bound to a gutter girl, the crown wants it leashed, and the man assigned to keep her is Cael Veyne, heir of the coldest House in the capital. He is everything she has learned to fear. And he has no idea that the night his sister died, Wren was the one who drew the bolt.

Every time the hollow saves her life, it takes a memory in payment.

To survive the court, the border, and the dead country pressing against the wall, Wren will have to decide what she can bear to forget, and whether a love built on a lie can outlast the truth.

The wall was never a wall.
It was a debt.

Chapter I

The Quiet Country · Four hundred years before

The Truest Thing

Four hundred years before the black sand, a girl at the edge of the grey and a lost girl from the reeds make the first bond the realm ever knew.

Enter the Quiet Country

Chapter II

The Kept · A Hollow Rite Prequel

The Fall of Coryn

One night, the Crown came for House Coryn. By morning the House was ash, and its heir had been struck from the record.

Enter the Kept

Chapter III

The Hollow Rite · The nineteenth year

Hollowbound

Every nineteen-year-old walks down to the centre mark and names the truest thing they carry. Wren walks onto the black sand. Everything the realm buried walks out with her.

Enter the Hollow Rite

A Dark Romantasy Trilogy

The Hollow Rite

Enemies to lovers, a bonded beast that feeds on memory, and a kingdom that prices its people before they are born.

Book One

Hollowbound

Coming soon

A gutter girl is bound to the most dangerous creature in the realm. The man sent to keep her has no idea what she did the night his sister died.

Book Two

Hollowforged

Coming soon

The truth Wren told on the black sand saved the wall. Now the crown has sent the bill.

A sealed order has arrived at Lastwatch with two words on it: spend her. The breaches are coming faster, the dead country is pressing in, and the hollow bound to Wren is the only thing holding the gaps. Every time he does, he takes another warm memory from her: a song, a face, the feeling behind a word.

Cael Veyne keeps a book of everything she loses and reads it back to her at night. It's the closest thing to a vow either of them can afford, because the House that raised him burned the House that raised her, and the papers behind that fire are still being filed.

Book Three

HollowUnbound

Coming soon

The wall was never a wall. It was a debt.

Wren has given the hollow nearly every warm thing she had, and the dead country is still coming. Now the crown wants her custody back on paper, the men who burned her House are finally in a courtroom, and the oldest record in the kingdom says the bargain that built the wall was signed by people who were never asked.

The rite asks for the truest thing you carry. This time, Wren has to decide what that is.

The Hollow Rite is written for readers 18+ and contains explicit sexual content, graphic violence, references to sexual violence, and the deaths of loved ones.

One World, Three Ages

Before the black sand

The Hollow Rite is the end of a much longer story. Three trilogies, one realm, and the bargain that built the wall.

Four hundred years before

The Quiet Country

A Trilogy · Dark Fantasy

I The Truest Thing

In the Sill, at the edge of the quiet country, nobody crosses the stones. Ilka has kept that rule all her life. She sits every night facing the east door, toward the grey.

In the Wend, a lost girl named Senna is found in the reeds by a black creature that will not leave her side. Two narrators, and the first bond the realm ever knew.

II A Winter Long

Ilka’s grief is carried now, held by the hound at her side, and a widowed trader from the Sorne country comes up the edge to learn how such a thing is done.

At the Wend, the blood-bridge rite arrives, and Senna becomes the one who must say whether a beast truly chose. Fear of the black one grows. So do the questions about the silent old woman who sits by the window every night.

III At One Fire

Down the river, the Lowthers have learned to force the bond, and it is killing their sons. When they come to the Wend for the black one, the ground turns grey, and the people who fear it most must decide what to do with it.

Senna will witness what is done, and she will see it written down truly.
The years before the Rite

The Kept

A Hollow Rite Prequel · Dark Fantasy

I The Fall of Coryn

House Coryn kept the kingdom's memory. Under its lowest corridor, behind a warded stone no grown man would cross, it kept something else. Someone sold that secret to the Crown.

This is the night the House burned, and the girl who walked out of the fire with a brand on her wrist and a name she would never say again.

II The Ash Years

The House is ash. The girl who walked out of it is nine years old, with three burned lines on her wrist and a number stitched to her sleeve, and she has one law: stay no one.

The years between the fire and the sand, told by the child who kept nothing.

III The Ten Winters

Ten winters take both her hands. Five of them are gone.

It ends where Hollowbound begins: on a wet stair under the fortress, with something under the stone counting down to her.

Arrives after The Hollow Rite. Contains graphic violence, children in danger, and the deaths of loved ones.
The nineteenth year

The Hollow Rite

Hollowbound · Hollowforged · HollowUnbound

Wren walks onto the black sand. Everything the realm buried walks out with her.