Character Files: Beckley

The Girl Who Thought She Was Ordinary

If you ask Beckley who she is at the beginning of What Lies Beneath the Heart, her answer would probably be simple: a bookstore owner, a daughter, a friend. Nothing more. For most of her life, that's exactly what she believed.

What Beckley doesn't realize is that childhood trauma doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it settles quietly into the spaces between memories, shaping the person you become long before you realize it's there.

She remembers her father being gone often, and her mother growing quiet and reserved, protective in ways that often felt like distance. She remembers overhearing her parents arguing one night when she was young, a terrible argument that lingered at the edges of her memory long enough to make her wonder, years later, if it had even happened at all. The next morning, her father was gone. Her mother told her he had passed peacefully by the river, and because she was a child, she accepted the explanation. As the years passed, the memory faded, or at least she thought it did.

The truth is that grief has a way of shaping us even when we don't fully understand it. It settles into the smallest parts of who we are: the way we trust, the way we love, the way we protect ourselves from being hurt again. Beckley grew up quiet and careful. She learned to keep her circle small, to trust slowly, to say exactly what she meant and nothing more, and to protect the parts of herself she wasn't ready to share.

Which is why Gaia becomes so important. Where Beckley is reserved, Gaia is outspoken. Where Beckley overthinks, Gaia acts. Where Beckley hesitates, Gaia charges forward. Together, they balance one another, and Gaia gives Beckley permission to laugh louder, speak more freely, and become the version of herself that only a trusted friend ever gets to see.

Then Ambrose arrives, and suddenly Beckley's carefully controlled world begins to shift. For the first time in her life, she feels pulled toward something she cannot explain, something powerful and overwhelming that she cannot seem to walk away from, no matter how hard she tries.

And honestly, who among us hasn't wanted to be loved passionately? To be chosen. To feel like we matter to someone. That longing is what makes Beckley so human. Not her magic, not her destiny, not the secrets hidden beneath the surface of her life. Her humanity. At her core, Beckley is a young woman searching for answers she doesn't even realize she's missing.

One of my favorite things about writing Beckley is that she doesn't begin the series believing she's extraordinary. She believes she's ordinary, that everyone else has the answers while she's simply trying to keep up. I think many of us know what that feels like.

The real story of What Lies Beneath the Heart isn't about a girl discovering magic. It's about a girl discovering that the life she's been living was only part of the story. And when the truth finally arrives, Beckley does what she has always done: she faces it. Maybe not gracefully, maybe not perfectly, but she faces it anyway. That's courage. Not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move forward despite it.

As we step into What Lies Beneath the Deceit, you'll begin to see a different side of Beckley. The questions that have followed her since childhood begin demanding answers, and the truths hidden from her become impossible to ignore. For the first time, Beckley starts making choices not based on who others expect her to be, but on who she chooses to become.

Book One is where Beckley's world falls apart. Book Two is where she begins putting the pieces back together. Her journey is only beginning, and I can't wait for you to walk beside her as she discovers that sometimes the strongest people aren't the ones born powerful. They're the ones brave enough to rebuild themselves after everything they believed turns out to be wrong.

Character Files: Ambrose

The High Lord Male Beyond the Veil

There are characters you write because you need them to move the story forward. And then there are characters who seem to have been waiting for you to discover them. Ambrose has always been the latter.

When readers first meet him in What Lies Beneath the Heart, he is a powerful fae High Lord who seems to know exactly who he is and exactly where he belongs. He is confident, intelligent, charismatic, and entirely comfortable within the world he was born into. He understands court politics, he understands power, and perhaps most importantly, he understands how to make other people believe he is in control.

But Ambrose's power isn't always loud. In fact, one of the things I love most about writing him is how little he has to say to make people listen. He doesn't need to raise his voice or constantly remind everyone of his position. There is a quiet authority to him that makes people take him seriously before he has even finished speaking. Sometimes, the most intimidating person in the room is the one who doesn't have to prove that they're the most powerful person there.

Ambrose understands that. He also understands people. He knows when to speak and, perhaps more importantly, when not to. He knows how to ask a question and let someone else fill the silence. He knows how to give someone just enough information to make them believe they've reached a conclusion on their own.

And there's one very important complication to all of this: Ambrose cannot lie.

Being fae comes with rules, and one of the most important is that a fae cannot knowingly speak a lie. That means Ambrose can't simply invent whatever story will get him out of trouble. He can't tell Beckley something he knows is completely untrue just because it's convenient.

So what does a man like Ambrose do when the truth is inconvenient? He chooses his words. He leaves things unsaid. He answers the question he was asked without necessarily answering the question the other person meant to ask. Sometimes he says nothing at all. And somehow, he usually still ends up on top.

That is one of my favorite things about writing him. His inability to lie doesn't make him less dangerous. If anything, it forces him to become more precise.

Beckley experiences this firsthand. Without getting into anything I don't want to spoil, Ambrose has a remarkable ability to manipulate a situation without appearing to manipulate it at all. He doesn't always need to tell Beckley what to think. Sometimes he simply gives her enough room to talk herself into an answer.

And that, to me, is far more interesting than a character who simply lies. Because when someone manipulates you into reaching the conclusion they wanted you to reach, you may never realize you were manipulated in the first place. Ambrose is a master at that. For him, words are not simply communication. They are tools, and he knows exactly when to use them, when to withhold them, and when silence will accomplish more than speaking ever could.

For Ambrose, power isn't simply something he possesses. It is something he has been taught to protect. He was raised in a world where authority was everything and weakness was something to be exploited. The expectations placed upon him were never particularly subtle, and over time, he learned to associate control with survival. He inherited more than a title. He inherited an ideology.

That makes Ambrose an especially interesting character to write because there are moments when you can understand exactly why he behaves the way he does, even when you absolutely should not excuse what he does. And that distinction matters to me. Morally grey characters aren't interesting because they are secretly good people hiding underneath terrible behavior. They're interesting because they are complicated enough to make you question where your own lines are.

Ambrose genuinely believes in the legacy he was raised to uphold. He believes that power must be protected, that authority must remain in the hands of those capable of wielding it, and that losing control is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to him.

Then Beckley enters his life. And suddenly, something he never anticipated begins to happen. He cares about her. That becomes a problem.

Because Ambrose is not accustomed to caring about people in ways that make him vulnerable. He is accustomed to control, certainty, and knowing exactly where everyone stands. Beckley disrupts that balance simply by existing, and the more complicated his feelings toward her become, the more complicated his choices become with them.

There is also something fascinating about the way Ambrose interacts with Beckley because she doesn't enter his world understanding any of its rules. She doesn't know what he knows, she doesn't understand the politics surrounding him, and she doesn't know the history that came before her. She certainly doesn't understand why he seems to know so much about a life she thought was entirely her own.

That creates a tension between them that I absolutely loved writing. How do you trust someone who knows more about your life than you do? How do you decide whether someone is protecting you or controlling you when you don't have all the information? And how do you recognize the difference when you're already emotionally invested? Those questions sit at the heart of Ambrose's relationship with Beckley throughout Book One.

But Ambrose is more than his relationship with her. He is a product of his family, his upbringing, his court, and the expectations placed upon him long before he ever had the opportunity to decide what kind of man he wanted to become. That doesn't absolve him. It does, however, make him interesting.

And I think that's the difference between writing a villain and writing someone morally grey. A villain can be easy to hate. A morally grey character makes you uncomfortable because sometimes you understand him. Sometimes you even agree with him. And then he does something that makes you question why you ever did.

That's Ambrose. He is charming enough to make you want to listen, powerful enough to make you think twice before challenging him, and clever enough to make you question whether you ever understood the conversation you were having with him in the first place.

And if you've finished What Lies Beneath the Heart, you probably know that you have only seen a fraction of his story.

Back by popular demand, for those of you who desperately needed some Ambrose closure after Book One: you're getting it.

I am currently planning Book 0.5 in the HeartStone Series, What Came Before the Bargain, for release in late 2027. This novella will take readers much deeper into Ambrose's history, his upbringing, his family, and the events that ultimately lead him to Beckley and set everything in motion in What Lies Beneath the Heart.

And yes, I know what you're thinking. But Brandi, why 0.5? Because this is the story that came before everything. Before the bargain. Before Beckley enters Ambrose's world. Before the events of Book One begin unfolding.

It will explore the choices, circumstances, and history that eventually bring Ambrose to Beckley and put the pieces of the first book into motion. Readers will finally get to see what was happening behind the scenes before Beckley ever knew there was a larger world waiting for her.

It will be a very different experience from simply seeing Ambrose through someone else's eyes. You'll get to step inside his history, understand the world that created him, and perhaps most importantly, decide for yourself which parts of Ambrose can be understood and which parts can never be justified.

I can't tell you everything yet. Some of his history is still meant to remain hidden. But if you think you understand Ambrose after Book One, I have a feeling you haven't met all of him yet.

And maybe that's exactly how he would prefer it.

What Lies Beneath the Heart

Chapter One (Leaked)

I woke with a gasp, the phantom weight of cold river water still filling my lungs, convinced someone had been holding me beneath the surface.

For a long moment, I lay frozen in the darkness, clutching the blankets as though they might anchor me to the bed. My heart pounded wildly against my ribs as I dragged in breath after breath, waiting for the suffocating sensation to loosen its grip.

The nightmare clung to me like damp mist, refusing to fade.

In it, the river stretched endlessly beneath a moonless sky, black and unforgiving. I fought against unseen hands forcing me under the freezing current, clawing desperately toward the surface, every reach for air dragging me down again, silent, relentless, inescapable.

Outside my window, the real river whispered softly through the reeds. The sound should have comforted me; it always had. Our cottage sat only a few yards from the water's edge, tucked between drooping willow trees and the narrow dirt path that wound toward town. I had grown up listening to that river, its steady murmur over smooth stones as familiar to me as breathing.

Tonight, however, the sound sent a chill creeping along my spine.

I pushed the blankets aside and swung my legs out of bed. The floorboards were cool beneath my feet as I crossed the room toward the small window overlooking the riverbank. Moonlight spilled across the glassy surface, turning the water into a silver ribbon twisting through the dark.

It looked peaceful, nothing like the suffocating depths of my dream still clinging to the edges of my mind.

My reflection caught faintly in the window, drawing my attention. My hair fell in long, tangled waves down my back, so dark it shimmered with a deep blue sheen wherever the moonlight touched it. My crystal-blue eyes stared back at me, wide and unsettled.

I splashed water from the basin onto my face, letting the coolness ground me as I muttered under my breath.

"Just a dream, Lee."

A floorboard creaked in the hallway behind me.

"Lee?" My mother's voice drifted in from the hall.

I turned as she appeared in the doorway, tying the sash of her robe around her waist. Her dark brown curls fell loosely around her shoulders, and moonlight caught the freckles scattered across her nose.

"You're awake," she murmured.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't." She studied my face a moment too long. "The dream again?"

I shrugged, forcing nonchalance into my voice. "Apparently my brain has developed a dramatic fascination with drowning."

Her expression didn't change. She crossed the room toward me instead, her bare feet silent against the wood. My mother always moved that way, light and fluid, as though she belonged to the night itself.

"You've had it several times now," she said.

"I'm fine."

She reached up, brushing a curl away from my forehead. Her hand was cool against my skin. "You're pale," she murmured.

"Probably because you showed up in the middle of the night to interrogate me."

The corner of her mouth twitched, almost a smile.

"Go back to sleep, Lee."

"I'll try."

She paused in the doorway, her bright eyes, so like my own, drifting toward the river beyond the window. For a moment, worry pulled at the corners of her mouth before she smoothed it away.

Then she turned and left.

I remained there a while longer, listening as the cottage settled into silence. The river continued its soft whisper outside, steady and unbothered. I told myself the dream meant nothing, that it was only my imagination running wild, but an uneasy thought lingered stubbornly in the back of my mind.

It felt as though the water had been calling to me.

Morning arrived wrapped in sunlight and the warm scent of fresh bread drifting from the bakery down the street.

By the time I unlocked the door to my shop, the town square was already alive with its usual gentle bustle. Farmers guided carts toward the market stalls while shopkeepers opened their shutters and swept their thresholds in practiced rhythm.

My bookstore sat at the edge of town, close enough to the river that I could slip away for a swim whenever the weather allowed. It felt like an extension of the river itself, catching the same morning light, carrying the same steady calm.

A wooden sign swayed gently above the door.

River's Edge Reads.

The name had come easily when I first opened the shop. The river curved behind the building, winding through town with a pulse all its own.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The familiar scent of roasted coffee beans and aged paper wrapped around me instantly. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, illuminating rows of wooden shelves and the small café tables tucked neatly between them.

Quiet. Peaceful. Exactly how I liked it.

I set my bag behind the counter and reached for the kettle.

Then froze.

Someone was sitting on the checkout counter.

I nearly dropped the kettle. She lounged there as though she owned the place, one leg swinging lazily while she flipped through a book from the display stack.

"Morning, Lee," she said without looking up.

I exhaled sharply. "Gaia."

She finally glanced up, a crooked grin spreading across her face. Her moss-green pixie cut stuck out in wild, uneven angles, like leaves caught in a restless breeze. Tiny vines threaded through the short strands, dotted with small white blossoms that definitely hadn't been there yesterday.

Or maybe they had. With Gaia, it was impossible to be certain.

"You really should start knocking," I said.

"You should really start locking your windows," she replied cheerfully.

"I do lock my windows."

"Clearly not well enough."

I crossed my arms. "How did you even get in here?"

She closed the book with a soft snap and shrugged. "There's a tree in the alley that's feeling very cooperative this morning."

Gaia hopped down from the counter, landing lightly on bare feet. The hem of her murky brown skirt brushed the floor as she moved toward me. Up close, she carried the faint scent of pine and damp earth, as if she had stepped straight out of the forest. Shimmering, vine-shaped tattoos curled up her arms and across her collarbone, their green patterns seeming to breathe with every small movement.

"You're shedding again," I said, brushing a tiny leaf off the counter.

"That is deeply offensive," she replied.

"You literally have a twig in your hair."

She plucked it free and flicked it at me. "Jealousy is not a good look on you."

I snorted and turned toward the kettle. Gaia wandered through the shop as I started the coffee, trailing her fingers along the spines of books as though greeting old friends. A small fern leaf briefly unfurled from the vine tattoo around her wrist before curling back into place.

Most people in town knew that nature spirits existed: dryads, naiads, and smaller beings that lived in reeds or hollow trees. Magic had always been quiet here, woven into soil, roots, and running water.

But Gaia was the only one I knew well enough to call my best friend.

She paused by the window, her gaze drifting toward the distant tree line at the edge of town.

"You look tired," she said.

"I didn't sleep well."

"The drowning dream again?"

I blinked. "How did you know about that?"

Gaia turned slowly, the morning light catching her forest-green eyes and making them glimmer like moss after rain. "You talk in your sleep when you visit the grove sometimes."

Fantastic. That was deeply comforting.

I handed her a mug of coffee. "Well, if I start sleepwalking into the river, feel free to stop me."

Gaia took a sip and hummed in approval. "I will," she said after a pause. "Probably."

I narrowed my eyes. "You're a terrible friend."

She raised her mug in a small salute. "And yet, you adore me."

Unfortunately, she wasn't wrong.

Outside, the river glimmered faintly through the trees behind the shop, its surface catching the morning light like liquid glass. I found myself watching it longer than I meant to, an uneasy pull settling low in my stomach.

It felt as though the river knew something I didn't.

What Lies Beneath the Deceit

Chapter One (Leaked)

Darkness has a sound. It is never silence. It lives in the slow, measured drip of water striking stone somewhere beyond sight. In the quiet scrape of iron shifting when I breathe too deeply. In the uneven drag of air through lungs that have forgotten what ease feels like.

It fills the space between thought and instinct until it becomes something else entirely.

Something alive. Something that waits.

Pain lives here too. Not sharp enough to overwhelm. Not distant enough to escape. It lingers. Threaded through muscle. Rooted in bone. A constant presence that no longer demands acknowledgment because it no longer needs to.

It simply is. Like the dark. Like the chains. Like me.

My head hangs forward, chin brushing my chest as I drag in a slow breath. Too deep, and the iron pulls. Too fast, and it reminds me.

The chains are not meant for restraint. They are meant for rejection.

The metal burns where it touches my skin, not like fire, not like heat, but like something fundamentally wrong. Like my body refuses it, and it answers in kind. Pressing deeper, punishing, correcting.

I don't fight them anymore. There's nothing left to fight for.

I remember the moment it happened. Not with clarity, and not with anything that could be called clean, but I remember enough to know exactly when everything changed. The bond didn't fade or weaken the way I might have expected. It snapped. One second it was there, a constant presence woven into me, and the next it was simply gone. It felt as though something had reached inside my chest and torn it out by the root, leaving nothing behind but a hollow ache that no longer even resembled pain.

The silence that followed was worse than anything that came after. Because I understood what it meant.

Dead.

The word itself doesn't carry grief anymore. Grief requires movement, something active and consuming, but this is different. This is stillness. This is emptiness. This is final.

Footsteps echo down the corridor, unhurried and certain, their rhythm blending seamlessly into the silence rather than breaking it. They belong here. They always have.

I don't lift my head. I don't move. I don't acknowledge the sound, because I already know who it is.

Dimitrios.

His presence reaches the cell before he does, pressing into the space and bending it subtly around him. By the time he steps into view, there is nothing uncertain about him. Control lives in him, breathes through him, saturates the air he occupies.

"Well," he says smoothly, his voice almost conversational, "still alive."

A dry sound escapes me, something that might have been a laugh once, though there's no humor left in it now.

"Tragic, I know."

The chain snaps tight without warning, yanking my arms upward just enough to tear a sharp breath from my lungs. Iron bites deeper into skin that has long since stopped bothering to heal, reopening wounds that never truly closed.

Pain flares, bright and immediate, before settling back into its familiar place.

"You're in no position to be clever," Dimitrios says mildly.

Slowly, deliberately, I lift my head and meet his gaze. I hold it, refusing to give him anything more than that.

"You'd be surprised," I reply quietly, my voice rough but steady, "what I can do from right here."

He pauses, but it isn't fear that flickers in his expression.

It's interest.

Another set of footsteps follows, lighter this time, uneven, dragging slightly against the stone. My attention shifts before I can stop it, instinct pulling my focus toward the sound.

And then she's thrown into the cell.

Her body hits the ground hard, the impact cracking through the space as her hands shoot out to catch herself. The breath is knocked from her lungs in a sharp exhale, her frame tightening as she absorbs the force of it.

I notice the scent before anything else.

Water, but not the still, stagnant kind that lingers in forgotten places. This is something deeper. River water. Ancient, moving, alive in a way that doesn't belong here.

Something inside me goes completely still.

She pushes herself upright slowly, wincing as dark curls fall forward around her face, and my breath catches.

Not because I recognize her.

I don't. I would know if I did. I would remember.

And yet something shifts inside me anyway, sudden and violent, like a reaction I don't have the context to understand.

Her eyes lift.

Blue. Not similar. Not close. The same.

My pulse stutters.

No. That's not possible.

"Get up," Dimitrios orders.

She doesn't move immediately. Instead, she looks, really looks, at the walls, the chains, the structure of the space, her gaze sharp and calculating as if she's already mapping it in her mind.

Not broken. Not even close.

Then her attention lands on me, and something shifts again.

Not recognition. But something dangerously close to it.

"You're not from here," she says quietly.

A faint, humorless smile tugs at my mouth.

"Neither are you."

Dimitrios exhales, the sound soft but edged with impatience.

"Let's not waste time."

The air tightens around us, subtle but unmistakable.

"We're looking for Beckley."

Outwardly, nothing changes. My expression doesn't shift, and my body remains as still as it was before.

But inside, something cracks, sharp and unwanted.

Because that name should mean nothing now.

She's gone. I felt it. I buried it.

The woman beside me stills, just barely, the reaction so slight it would be easy to miss if I weren't already watching her.

"I don't know where she is," she says.

Too fast. Too clean.

Dimitrios crouches in front of her, his movements controlled, deliberate.

"You were seen leaving with her horse."

Silence.

"She told you something."

Nothing.

"I told you," she repeats, her voice steady, "I don't know."

He tilts his head, studying her for a moment before rising to his full height.

"Unfortunate."

The pain comes quickly after that, precise and controlled, delivered with the kind of efficiency that speaks of long practice.

I don't look away. I don't close my eyes. I watch her.

I watch the way her jaw locks, the way her shoulders tremble but refuse to fold. There's strain there, undeniable, but she doesn't break. Not even close.

That kind of strength isn't accidental. It's forged. Built. Earned.

Or inherited.

"You'd tell me if you knew," Dimitrios says calmly.

She lets out a breathless, defiant laugh.

"Would I?"

The next strike lands harder, and something in me reacts before I can stop it.

Not sympathy. Not pity. Instinct, violent, immediate, wrong.

My hands tighten against the chains, iron biting deeper as something beneath my ribs twists sharply, pulling tight like a thread stretched too far, too fast. My breath catches despite myself.

No. The bond is gone. I felt it die. I felt her die.

Something brushes against me.

Faint. So faint I almost miss it.

Like warmth remembered rather than felt.

My pulse stutters once, hard and wrong.

No. That's my mind breaking. That's—

It comes again. Closer this time.

Not memory. Not grief. Something reaching.

Every instinct screams to shut it down, to bury it before it can become something real.

Not now. Not here. Not with him watching.

And then it hits.

The bond doesn't return gently. It slams into me with violent force, a breath-stealing impact that caves my chest inward as though something has struck me from the inside out. The air vanishes, not taken but destroyed, my lungs seizing as my ribs lock in place.

My heart stutters like it's forgotten how to beat without her.

The chain snaps taut as my body reacts, iron tearing into my skin as it drags me back into place. I drop my head forward, not from weakness, but from control.

From survival.

Inside, everything ignites.

Fire floods through me, wild and uncontrolled, roaring through every part of me that had gone cold. The hollow space in my chest fills violently, completely, leaving no room for doubt.

Her.

Not distant. Not fading. Not gone.

Alive.

Blindingly, impossibly alive.

The bond doesn't settle. It surges, crashing back into place as though it was never meant to break at all. It's stronger now, sharper, deeper, with no distance and no barrier to dull its edge.

Emotion slams through it.

Not mine. Not entirely.

Fear. Movement. Urgency.

And beneath it, me.

She feels me.

The realization hits harder than the bond itself, because this isn't one-sided anymore. This connection runs both ways now, open and exposed in a way it never was before.

Mine.

The thought tears through me, raw and instinctive, and I crush it down immediately.

If that thought slips, if even a fraction of this reaches Dimitrios, he will follow it.

And if he follows it, he will find her.

I force my breathing to slow, forcing my body back into stillness, forcing the reaction down until it looks like nothing more than pain.

Only pain. Nothing else.

But the bond doesn't quiet.

It pulses, alive and insistent, pulling at me with a force I can't ignore.

She's reaching.

No. We are.

"She's alive," I breathe.

The words barely exist, fragile and quiet, but they are real in a way nothing else has been since everything went dark.

The woman's head snaps toward me immediately, sharp and precise, as if she felt it too.

And for the first time since the silence, since the loss, since the hollow that swallowed everything I was, I know the truth.

She didn't die.

And whatever has just come back is stronger than it has ever been before.

Which means it's going to get us both killed.

The Shadows Behind Her

Prologue (Leaked)

The palace had always smelled of orange blossoms. They bloomed beyond the eastern colonnades, climbing ivory trellises until they kissed the marble balconies where the ladies gathered each morning. Even now, the scent alone could carry me back to that day with startling clarity, to a little girl whose greatest concern had been whether the butterflies preferred the white flowers or the gold.

Memory is a curious thing. There are years of my childhood I can scarcely recall, swallowed by a fog so dense it left behind only fragments, a voice, a prayer, the sting of rope upon my wrists. Yet this day remained untouched, preserved with cruel precision, as though fate herself had wished for me never to forget the moment my world first came undone.

I had been three years of age.

Mother knelt before me while the maids fussed over the ribbons of her gown, laughing softly as I insisted upon fastening one of her gloves myself. My fingers were clumsy, and the tiny pearl buttons refused to obey, though she never hurried me.

"You are becoming quite accomplished, my little sunbeam," she said, brushing a curl from my brow. I remembered smiling so broadly my cheeks had ached.

"May I accompany you?"

Her expression softened with that familiar sadness mothers carry whenever duty denies affection. "Not today."

"But I shall be good."

"I know you shall."

"I shan't complain."

"I know that also."

I considered this with all the solemnity a child could muster before asking the question that seemed most important. "When will you return?"

"Before the sun begins to sleep." She kissed my forehead. "I promise."

Promises were sacred things. Children believed them with an unwavering certainty only age could diminish.

I watched from the balcony as her gilded carriage disappeared through the palace gates, the banners of Helios fluttering behind it in ribbons of molten gold. She looked back only once, lifting a gloved hand. I waved until I could no longer see her.

The day stretched on as days often did for children. Tutors came and went. Servants smiled. Prince Lux complained that I had hidden one of his toy soldiers beneath the roses, though I insisted the roses had hidden it themselves.

The sun climbed, then began to fall. I stood upon the balcony again.

Mother had promised.

The palace bells marked another hour. She did not come.

At first, no one seemed concerned. Carriages were delayed. Merchants talked too long. Queens lingered where princesses could not understand.

Then footsteps echoed through the corridors, too many, too hurried. Voices that usually drifted through the palace like music turned sharp enough to cut marble.

A knight arrived with blood upon his sleeve. I remember that more clearly than his face, not the blood itself, but the way everyone looked at it. Servants stopped speaking. The musicians fell silent. One of Mother's ladies began to weep before anyone had uttered a single word.

Father crossed the great hall with such terrible purpose that even the guards stepped aside without instruction. I had never seen him run. No one noticed me standing beside the pillar. Children were often invisible.

"...the carriage..." someone whispered.

"...attacked..."

"...Your Majesty..."

"...the Queen lives..."

Lives. Even at three, I knew that was not the word one used unless death had walked very near.

Everything afterward dissolved into confusion.

Mother returned after nightfall, not in her splendid carriage, not smiling. She was carried through the palace gates wrapped in a cloak stained dark at the shoulder, her golden hair unbound and tangled as though the wind itself had sought to steal it.

I broke free of my nurse before anyone could stop me. "Mother!"

Strong hands caught me before I reached her. She looked at me. She smiled, only for a heartbeat, then her eyelids drifted shut once more.

I did not understand why everyone cried. She was alive. She had smiled. Promises could still be kept. Could they not?

That night, sleep would not come. The palace felt different. The corridors that had once glowed with candlelight now seemed impossibly long, their shadows reaching farther than they ought.

I left my bed barefoot, clutching the little embroidered rabbit Mother had given me on my last nameday. The silence pressed against my ears. I wished only to see that Mother's chamber door remained guarded. If the guards were there, then she was safe.

When I reached the gallery overlooking the eastern hall, I looked toward her door. Two guards. I counted them twice. One. Two. Safe. Relief warmed my chest. I turned to return to bed.

Something moved.

At the very end of the corridor, where the candlelight surrendered to darkness, stood a figure taller than any man I had ever seen. It did not move. It did not speak. It simply watched. Its edges shifted like smoke disturbed by a breeze, though the air within the palace was perfectly still.

My breath caught. I blinked. The figure remained.

My fingers tightened around the rabbit until the stitches bit into my palms. One thought settled into my mind with frightening certainty.

It followed Mother home.

I fled before it could take another step. Long after I had buried myself beneath my blankets, I continued to count. The windows. The candles. The breaths between each heartbeat. Again. Again. Again. Because if I stopped, I feared someone I loved would never come home again.

The years that followed dissolved into a haze from which only fragments remained. There were birthdays I could not recall, summer festivals whose laughter had vanished into silence, lessons I knew I must have attended though I could not summon the faces of the tutors who had instructed me. Yet what remained had survived with dreadful clarity, sharpened by fear until even the smallest details became impossible to forget.

I remembered coarse linen cutting into my wrists. I remembered the scent of incense clinging to damp stone. I remembered Priest Eleazar's voice rising above my own cries as he declared that darkness always fought against the light before surrendering to it.

Most of all, I remembered the water. It was always cold. Hands pressed against my shoulders while prayers echoed through the chamber, each verse louder than the last, as though volume alone might compel whatever evil they believed lived within me to flee.

I would struggle. The water would fill my ears until their voices dissolved into indistinguishable murmurs beneath the surface. Then they would pull me upward. I would gasp for breath. Someone would ask whether I confessed, whether the darkness had spoken, whether I still heard the voices, whether I still saw the shadows.

I did not know how to answer questions I could scarcely understand. So I cried. And they mistook my tears for defiance.

The water came again.

By the time I was old enough to understand what they believed, I had already begun to believe it myself. Madness. Possession. Corruption. Those words followed me through every corridor of Helios until they settled somewhere deep within my heart.

If an unwelcome thought entered my mind, I feared it had not come from me at all. If I failed to finish a prayer exactly as I had begun it, I became certain some unseen punishment would descend upon my family. If I stumbled over a single sacred verse, I whispered it again, and again, three times, five, until it felt quiet enough to breathe. Only then would I allow myself to stop.

The priests praised devotion. They never recognized desperation. Nor did they question why my prayers grew longer with each passing year.

Celestine learned my rituals before anyone else. Each morning she fastened the ribbons of my gowns with practiced hands, and when my own fingers reached to straighten them once more, she slapped them away.

"You have already adjusted them."

"But they are uneven."

"They are not."

"They feel uneven."

"They only feel so because your mind is determined to deceive you."

If I reached for the ribbons again, she bound my wrists to the carved arms of the dressing chair with leather straps commissioned for that very purpose. The right strap was always tighter than the left. She knew it. I knew it. Sometimes I believed she tightened them unevenly simply to watch my composure unravel.

The leather would bite into one wrist more sharply than the other until I could think of nothing else. I would plead, not to be released, only to have them made equal. No one understood why such a small thing mattered. Neither did I. Only that it did.

The shadows never disappeared. They lingered at the end of long galleries where the candles could not quite reach, stood within the corners of empty chapels, caught the edge of my sight in a polished window before vanishing when I turned to look. Whether they were born of fear or memory, I could never say. The priests assured me they were proof the darkness remained. I stopped telling anyone when I saw them. It seemed kinder than watching disappointment settle across Mother's face.

She had once smiled whenever I entered a room. As the years passed, she began searching my expression for signs of whatever sickness they believed consumed me. I mourned her long before she ever left this world.

By my sixteenth year, I had learned that silence was often safer than honesty. It was on one such evening that everything changed.

The palace had long since retired. Moonlight spilled through the eastern corridors in pale ribbons, silvering the marble beneath my slippers as I completed the final circuit of the upper gallery. One door. Three touches. The next. Three again. Five measured breaths before continuing. If I completed the circuit before midnight, no harm would come to my family. It was absurd. I knew it. Yet certainty demanded obedience.

As I approached Father's western study, voices drifted beneath the heavy oak door. Lux. And a woman.

I ought to have continued walking. Instead I stopped.

One breath. Two. Three.

"I still cannot believe it remained hidden all these years," the woman murmured.

"It was always going to," Lux replied, sounding almost amused. "Father saw to that."

My heart slowed. Father?

"The risk was enormous. The reward was greater."

A pause settled between them. Then she asked quietly, "And if someone discovers what happened to King Theron?"

I felt the world beneath my feet become strangely unsteady.

Lux laughed, low, careless. "No one shall ever discover Father arranged the death of the King of Selene."

The words struck harder than any hand ever had. King Theron. The ruler I had been taught to fear since infancy. The sovereign whose kingdom supposedly desired nothing but Helios's ruin.

My brother continued as though discussing the weather. "The blame fell precisely where it was intended."

"The Western Court never questioned it?"

"They questioned plenty. But they could prove nothing."

Silence followed. Then the woman spoke once more. "And the princess?"

A chair scraped softly across the floor. "My sister?" Lux scoffed. "Ariadne scarcely trusts her own memories. Even if she heard every word spoken within this room, she would convince herself she had imagined it before she ever accused our father."

A silence far heavier than the one before it settled upon the corridor. My fingers slipped from the doorframe.

For years I had questioned my own mind. Every memory. Every fear. Every shadow. Now I wondered whether I had been asking the wrong question all along.

Perhaps I had never been the one who could not be trusted. Perhaps it was Helios. And perhaps the darkness I had spent my entire life fearing had never lived within me at all.

What Came Before Her

Prologue (Leaked)

You know it's going to be a bad day when you wake to the smell of iron.

It threads through the air before I even open my eyes, thick and metallic and wrong. Not the dry, mineral heat of the volcanic desert I've known my whole life, not the ash that settles into everything beyond the Veil. This is sharper, wetter, alive in a way it shouldn't be.

I lie there for a moment, suspended between sleep and something colder, listening.

The house is too quiet. No low murmur of my father's voice, no rhythmic clatter from the kitchen, no distant hum of wind dragging across the obsidian dunes. Just silence, heavy and pressing, like the world is holding its breath.

My stomach tightens. I sit up.

The air feels off, thick enough to choke on. Sunlight leaks through the cracks in the stone walls, casting thin, molten-gold lines across the floor. That's when I see it.

At first, I think it's shadow, a dark streak cutting across the stone just beyond my doorway, uneven and jagged.

But shadows don't glisten.

My chest stutters as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, bare feet meeting the cool floor. I step closer, each movement slower than the last, like if I take it too fast, whatever waits on the other side of that threshold will become real.

It already is.

Blood.

It drags down the hallway in a smeared trail, as if something, or someone, was pulled.

My throat goes dry.

"Mom?" My voice cracks, small and useless against the silence.

No answer.

The word echoes anyway, swallowed by the stone.

I step into the hall.

The scent hits harder here, thick enough to taste. Copper coats the back of my tongue. My pulse begins to pound, loud and uneven, filling the void where everything else should be.

I follow the streak without meaning to, past the carved pillars, past the wall of black glass that looks out over the endless stretch of burning sand and distant, smoking ridges. The world beyond the Veil glows as it always does, harsh and unrelenting, but inside, something has shifted.

Something is terribly wrong.

"Mom?" I try again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

The trail leads toward the main chamber.

My chest tightens with every step, dread coiling tighter, tighter, until it feels like it might split me open from the inside. I don't want to keep going.

I can't stop.

Then, a sound.

Soft, wet, movement.

I freeze.

The doorway to the main chamber yawns ahead, dark at its center despite the morning light. For a moment, I just stand there, staring, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.

Then a figure steps into view.

My breath leaves me in a rush I don't remember taking.

"Mom...?"

Seraphina stands in the center of the room, her silhouette cut sharp against the light pouring in behind her.

She is covered in blood.

Not splattered. Not marked.

Covered.

It soaks into the pale fabric of her dress, dark and heavy, clinging to her like a second skin. It streaks her arms, her hands, her hands.

My gaze locks there.

They drip, a slow, steady rhythm against the stone floor.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Her hair, usually pinned, precise, controlled, has come loose, strands clinging to her face, damp with sweat or something else. Her breathing is uneven. Her eyes are bright, too bright, alive in a way that feels wrong, like she's standing at the edge of something vast and terrible and beautiful all at once.

"Abel," she says, and my name sounds like both a prayer and a command.

I take a step back before I can stop myself.

Her gaze sharpens.

"Don't."

The word snaps through the air, and I freeze instantly.

I've never heard her sound like that. Not my mother, the careful, distant woman who speaks in measured tones and half-finished prophecies. Not the one who watches the horizon like she's waiting for it to answer her.

This version of her is urgent, electric, unhinged.

My voice comes out thinner than I mean it to.

"Mom... what—" I swallow hard, forcing the words past the rising panic. "What did you do?"

For a moment, something flickers across her face.

Conviction.

"I saw it," she says, stepping toward me. "I finally saw it clearly."

Each step leaves a faint print behind her. Red against stone.

"I've had visions before, you know that. Fractured things. Pieces." Her voice trembles, but not with fear, with intensity.

My pulse roars in my ears.

"Where's Dad?"

The question slips out before I can stop it.

Her movement stills, just for a second. And in that second, everything inside me drops.

"He wouldn't understand," she says quietly.

It's the way she says it that makes my chest cave in.

Not defensive, not uncertain.

Final.

A cold, creeping horror crawls up my spine.

"Mom..." My voice breaks. "What did you do?"

Her eyes soften then, just slightly, like she's looking at something fragile.

At me.

"I did what I had to do."

The words land like a blade between my ribs.

"You don't know what's coming, Abel," she continues, faster now, urgency bleeding back in. "You don't feel it yet, but you will. Everything is shifting. The Veil, the kingdoms, the balance of it all—"

She grabs my wrist.

Her hand is warm.

Too warm.

Sticky.

"You have to come with me. Now."

My breath stutters.

"Come... where?"

"There's no time." Her grip tightens. "If we stay, you'll be taken. Or worse, you'll never become what you're meant to be."

Fear slams into me, sharp and disorienting.

"I don't understand—"

"I know." Her voice softens again, but her eyes don't. "That's why you have to trust me."

Trust.

The word feels foreign in my mouth.

Behind her, the main chamber stretches wide and silent.

Too silent.

I don't look past her. I can't.

But I know.

Something, someone, isn't getting back up.

My chest aches like it's being crushed from the inside.

"This is wrong," I whisper.

Her expression hardens.

"No," she says. "This is necessary."

The world tilts.

Everything I've ever known, every quiet morning, every distant, strange warning she's ever given, every solid, grounding presence my father ever was, it all fractures in that moment, splitting clean down the middle.

"Abel."

My name again. Softer now. Pleading.

"Please."

The word shouldn't belong to her.

And yet, her grip trembles, just barely.

I look at her.

At the blood.

At the wild, burning certainty in her eyes.

At the woman who raised me.

At the stranger standing in her place.

And somewhere deep in my chest, beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, something else stirs.

A knowing, dark and quiet and impossible to name.

That whatever I choose right now, nothing will ever be the same again.

She pulls on my wrist.

"Come."

I hesitate, just for a heartbeat.

Then I move.

And I don't look back.

The Shadows Within Her

Prologue (Leaked)

The candles in my study had burned low, and I had not the will to call for more.

Keres stood near the window with his arms folded, watching the dark line of the courtyard as though he expected someone to come riding through it before dawn. My mother sat across from me in the chair that had been my father's, though I do not think she noticed she had chosen it. She had not spoken in some minutes. None of us had.

It had not yet been a full day since we fled Helios.

"She is still resting," I said, more to fill the silence than to inform anyone of what we already knew. Ariadne lay only two doors down, under Twyla's watch, and had not stirred since we brought her home. We had spoken of moving her into my own chambers before ever we left for Helios, and done nothing about it in the end, too occupied with the journey to see it through. It had fallen to us in haste the moment we returned, with no thought given to propriety, only to how quickly it could be done, and I was glad of it now, glad she was near enough that I did not have to cross half the palace to stand outside her door. I had gone to her door twice already since sitting down, and twice found nothing changed.

"She will wake," Keres said, without turning from the window. He said it the way he said most things, as a fact rather than a comfort, though I confess I was glad of it regardless.

My mother finally lifted her eyes. "We cannot simply wait here in silence, Thessian. Helios will not."

"No," I agreed. "They will not."

I had turned the matter over so many times since we left that it had worn a groove in my thoughts, and yet I found no new shape to it. We had ridden from that court not because Lucia or the priest had raised a hand against us, but because I had not trusted what would happen if we remained beneath their roof another hour. I said as much aloud now, and neither Keres nor my mother argued it.

"There is something I have not been able to set aside," I said. "When they understood what she was, what she could do. It was not surprise on their faces. I have seen surprise. I have seen a man discover something he did not expect and does not yet know what to make of it. That was not it."

Keres turned from the window at last. "You think they knew."

"I think they were afraid," I said. "And a man is not afraid of a thing he has only just learned exists."

My mother was very still. "You believe they did something to her."

I did not answer at once, because I did not wish to give shape to a thought I had been trying not to look at directly. It was not the first time I had heard her speak of it. She had woken from it before, more than once, gasping and unable to say why, and each time I had held her and called it only a dream, because I had not known, then, what else to call it. But she had spoken of it again in the carriage, in the half-formed way of a woman not fully returned to herself, of needles, and of a room she could not place, and this time I could not make myself believe my own comfort.

"She has dreamed of needles," I said. "More than once."

My mother's hand went to her mouth, and for a moment she looked less like a queen than like a woman remembering something she had spent years refusing to remember. She said nothing at all for a long while, her gaze fixed somewhere past my shoulder, on some memory I could not follow her into. I did not press her. I only waited, and let the silence sit between us as long as it needed to.

"Aurelia," she said, finally, very quietly.

"You knew her," I said. It was not a question. I had known that much my whole life, the way one knows the shape of a house without recalling how the furniture was once arranged inside it.

"We were girls together, before the courts divided us." My mother's voice had gone thin. "I have not spoken to her in years. Not truly. Not since everything came apart between our houses, and I let it come apart without a fight, because it was easier than the alternative." She stopped, and pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes. "And now I learn that Arthur is Ariadne's father. Arthur, who has mucked out my stables for the better part of his life, and never once said a word."

"He does not know," Keres said.

The room went quiet in a different way than before.

"He cannot know," my mother said. "Aurelia was told he was dead. Lucia has known the truth of it since before Ariadne was born, and said nothing, to any of them."

My mother shook her head slowly, as though she might shake some sense into the whole of it. "But how did this happen at all. Aurelia was already queen when I knew her, when whatever passed between them must have passed. Does Arthur even know what she was, or does he still think of her as some girl he once loved, with no notion that he lay with a queen at all." She fell silent a moment, and when she spoke again there was less anger in it than a kind of bewildered grief. "And how did I not know. I called her friend. I sat across from her at a hundred suppers and never once saw it in her face."

"Grief hides well behind a crown," I said, though I do not know that I believed it would have comforted me, had our places been reversed.

I thought of Arthur then, of the quiet way he moved about the stables, the way he had once steadied a horse for me when I was still a boy too frightened to admit it. He had never once given any sign of carrying such a thing. Perhaps he had not known there was a thing to carry.

"He deserves to be told," my mother said. "Whatever else is true, he deserves that much."

"He does," I said. "But not tonight."

She looked at me.

"Ariadne has been unconscious less than a day," I said. "I will not add this to whatever she wakes to before I know she is well enough to bear it, and I will not have Arthur learn it secondhand, in a house not his own, before we know what state she is in. When she wakes, we tell him. Together, if she wishes it. Not before."

Keres inclined his head, which was, from him, agreement. My mother held my gaze a moment longer, some old grief still moving behind her eyes, then nodded as well.

No one spoke again for a while after that, and I thought the matter closed for the night. But my mother, rising to take her leave, paused at the door and turned back.

"There is another thing," she said, "that I have not been able to set down either, though I do not know that it wants deciding tonight."

"Say it," I told her.

"Her brother." She said it carefully, as though testing whether the words would hold their shape once spoken aloud. "He did not wear the same look as his father and the priest. Whatever they knew, whatever they feared, I do not think he shared it. He looked, for a moment, as though the ground had gone out from beneath him same as the rest of us."

I had marked it too, though I had not spoken of it. A flicker, gone almost before I trusted my own eyes.

"And yet he said nothing," Keres said. "Not a word in her defense."

"He mocked alongside his father," I said, "before I had even finished declaring myself." I had not forgotten it, the sound of his laughter joining Lucia's before I had finished speaking.

"Shock is not the same as courage," my mother said. "I do not excuse him for it. But it is not nothing, either, that he looked as though he had not known."

Keres considered this in the way he considered most things, weighing it for its use before he weighed it for its truth. "If he did not know, and did not approve of what he saw, then he is not so firmly his father's creature as Lucia would have us believe. A man like that is not merely a brother to grieve over. He is a crack in Helios's wall, and a king would be foolish not to ask what might be done with it."

I did not care for the coldness of it, and yet I could not fault the sense. Whatever he was to Ariadne, he was also a prince of a court that had just shown itself willing to fear its own blood. If there was division inside that house, it was worth knowing where it ran.

"He is her brother first," I said. "Whatever use he may be to us after."

"He can be both," Keres said, not unkindly. "I do not ask you to choose tonight. But you are not merely a man who might comfort her over it, Thessian. You are the King of Selene, and he is a prince of Helios. Whatever passes between our courts now passes between enemies, or as near to it as makes no difference. If you go to him at all, it will not be read as kindness. It will be read as a king courting a rival house's blood, and Lucia will name it conspiracy the moment it serves him to."

"Then perhaps it is best it does not come from me," I said, though even as I said it I did not care for the shape of the thought, that I might use Ariadne's own brother as a piece to be moved and call it strategy.

"Perhaps," Keres allowed. "That, too, can wait to be decided."

I sat with that a moment. It was one thread among a great many, and not the one that would decide whether Ariadne woke well or ill, nor whether Helios meant to come after her, nor what we owed Arthur once he knew. But it could not simply wait to be felt. It would need to be reckoned with, both as a wound of Ariadne's and as a question of state, and I did not think we could afford to look at only one half of it when the time came.

"We will come back to him," I said. "Once we know what she wakes to. Not before."

My mother nodded, satisfied enough with that for one night, and settled quietly into the chair nearest the fire, content to sit with her own thoughts a while longer. I had risen from my own chair, meaning at last to go stand outside Ariadne's door as I had twice already that night, when the door to my study burst open without so much as a knock.

Kaelith stood in the frame, breathless, his apology already spilling out ahead of any sense. "Your Majesty, forgive me, I did not know how else, she would not be stopped at the gate, I tried to send word first, I—"

"Kaelith," I said, "what is it?"

"Her Majesty," he said, "the Queen of Helios."

I do not think I understood him fully until she came up behind him into the light.

She was soaked through, her cloak heavy with rain and clinging to her shoulders, and her face was streaked with tears that the rain had not washed away so much as joined. She looked past Kaelith, past me, to my mother, who had gone still as stone by the door.

"I—" Aurelia's voice broke on the single sound, and she seemed unable to find the rest of it for a moment. "I fled."

No one in the room said anything at all.

Let's Talk About Morally Grey Men

Or Perhaps More Accurately... Let's Talk About Power

Fantasy readers love morally grey men. In fact, I would argue we love them a little too much. Every year we collectively find a new fictional man waving enough red flags to supply an entire kingdom and immediately decide he's our favorite. And honestly, I understand.

But I don't think morally grey characters are interesting because they're dangerous. I think they're interesting because they're complicated. The best morally grey characters force us to ask uncomfortable questions about power, fear, love, loyalty, and the choices people make when they believe they're running out of options.

When I was writing What Lies Beneath the Heart, I realized something surprising. Almost every major male character in the story has a complicated relationship with power. Not love, not destiny. Power.

Ambrose

At first glance, he appears confident, controlled, certain of who he is and what he wants. But certainty and security are not always the same thing. Some people pursue power because they want to rule. Others pursue power because they're terrified of what might happen if they lose control. And sometimes those motivations become impossible to separate.

Ambrose genuinely believes he is continuing his father's legacy by keeping the HeartStones so he can control everything and hold all the power. He was raised into this belief, and he possesses his father's narcissism and ego in equal measure. He does care for Beckley, but he would never have been capable of loving her the way she deserves. He loves himself, his throne, his authority. He's afraid of anyone holding power over him, which is exactly why Beckley becomes a danger to him later, not only because of who she is and the power she comes to possess, but because he comes to care for her in a way he never expected. And that only sets up even worse morally grey behavior down the line, when he makes a choice involving someone very important to Beckley that I won't spoil here.

Pavlos

A man whose choices continue shaping the story long after he's gone. Pavlos didn't begin as a villain. In many ways, he began as a father and a husband, a man with goals and responsibilities and people he loved. But fantasy is filled with characters who convince themselves they'll stop once they've gone far enough. The problem is that power rarely tells you where "far enough" is, and greed has a habit of disguising itself as necessity.

Pavlos was a good father until he wasn't. As the original Earth HeartStone Keeper, he traveled between realms and lived with his wife, Naida, on the outskirts of the human realm while searching for the other Keepers. But he grew impatient, and that impatience turned into a plan to steal the stones himself. In his greed, he took the Sapphire HeartStone and ran out of time to take his own before he was caught. With the Sapphire's power, he controlled his wife, the water, the trade routes, everything, until it drowned him from the inside out. He never had the chance to secure his own stone or the stone of water, and along the way, he wasn't faithful while traveling between realms either.

Eryndor

Eryndor is perhaps the easiest man in the story to understand. He wants power, he wants control, he wants certainty, and if protecting those things requires sacrifice, then so be it. History is filled with rulers like him, and the immortal realm is no exception. He's been power hungry from the very start, driven by a fear of anyone ever ruling over him, which is exactly why the idea of the HeartStone Keepers finding one another terrifies him. In his mind, he's simply protecting himself and his power, whatever the cost, and he is every bit as ruthless as that mission requires.

Dimitrios

Loyal, ruthless, practical: the kind of man who understands exactly how dangerous power can be and decides survival is easier than rebellion. His loyalty raises one of my favorite fantasy questions. At what point does following orders become a choice? Because choosing not to act is still a choice. Dimitrios stays loyal to Ambrose largely because he doesn't want to end up on the wrong side of that power, and he's a ruthless leader in his own right, willing to cross whatever lines the moment calls for, killing and torture included.

The truth is, morally grey characters are rarely defined by the bad things they do. They're defined by how they justify those things. Every villain is the hero of their own story. Every ruler believes they know what's best. Every selfish decision starts with a reason, sometimes a good one, sometimes not. And that's what makes these characters so fascinating to write. Not because they're good, not because they're evil, but because they're human, even when they're immortal.

And perhaps that's the most dangerous thing about morally grey men. They aren't monsters. They're people. And people are far more complicated.

Beckley & Ambrose

A Romance Built on Attraction, Secrets, and Questionable Decisions

There is something irresistible about a romance that makes you wonder whether the characters should be together long before you ever start wondering whether they can be. Beckley and Ambrose were always going to be complicated.

Their relationship begins with an attraction neither of them quite knows what to do with, and from there, every answer seems to lead to another question. The more Beckley learns about Ambrose, the more she realizes there are pieces of his world she doesn't understand. The more she is drawn toward him, the harder it becomes to separate what she wants from what she has been told to believe. Which is exactly where the fun begins.

If you love your romantasy with a little danger, a little mystery, and characters who make decisions that would probably send their therapists into early retirement, here are some of the tropes woven throughout What Lies Beneath the Heart.

Instant Attraction

Beckley doesn't have years to slowly convince herself that Ambrose might be someone she wants in her life. The moment he enters her world, something shifts. That immediate pull is part of what makes their relationship so compelling, because Beckley doesn't understand where the feeling comes from. She isn't accustomed to being swept away by another person, and Ambrose is certainly not the kind of man who makes things easy for her. Their attraction becomes another mystery for her to solve, particularly when her heart seems to recognize something her mind cannot explain.

Forbidden Attraction

There are plenty of reasons Beckley and Ambrose shouldn't be drawn to one another, which, naturally, makes the attraction considerably more interesting. Their worlds are different, their circumstances are complicated, and there are expectations surrounding them that neither can simply ignore. The more their connection develops, the more dangerous it becomes to pretend that it isn't there. Forbidden attraction works best when the characters themselves understand why they should stay away and still find themselves unable to do it. Beckley and Ambrose are no exception.

The Morally Grey MMC

Ambrose is not a traditional romantic hero, and I never wanted him to be. He is powerful, intelligent, charismatic, and accustomed to getting what he wants. He has spent his entire life surrounded by power and authority, and he carries the confidence of someone who has never had much reason to question his place within his world. That makes his interest in Beckley especially intriguing, because Ambrose has secrets. He knows things Beckley doesn't, and he understands the immortal realm in ways she cannot yet comprehend. There are moments when the reader may find themselves wondering whether he is protecting her, manipulating her, or somehow doing both. Perhaps the most interesting question isn't whether Ambrose is good. It's whether he is capable of becoming something different from what he was raised to be.

Fated Mates

There are few things more irresistible in fantasy romance than the idea that two people could be connected by something older than either of them. For Beckley, the concept of a mate bond gives her something that feels almost impossible to explain: a reason for the intensity she feels. But What Lies Beneath the Heart is also a story about the difference between what we believe something means and what it might actually mean. That makes the idea of fate particularly important to Beckley's journey. How much of love is choice? How much is destiny? And how do you know the difference? Those questions sit quietly beneath her relationship with Ambrose, even when she doesn't realize she's asking them.

Hidden Magic

Beckley begins the story believing she is human. That belief becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as pieces of her past begin surfacing and the world around her starts revealing itself as something far stranger than she ever imagined. The magic in Book One isn't simply there to make the world more fantastical. It is part of Beckley's identity, and every discovery forces her to reconsider something she thought she knew about herself. The mystery becomes just as important as the magic itself.

Dangerous Bargains

There is a reason the immortal realm has rules about bargains. Fae magic is old, powerful, and binding, and a promise made within that world carries considerably more weight than an ordinary agreement between two people. The danger is that a bargain doesn't necessarily require someone to lie. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to tell you exactly what you need to hear while leaving out everything you don't know to ask. That makes bargains one of my favorite pieces of the HeartStone world, because they turn words themselves into weapons.

Court Politics

Beckley doesn't simply stumble into a magical world filled with beautiful creatures and ancient forests. She finds herself surrounded by courts with their own histories, loyalties, rivalries, and expectations. Ambrose belongs to that world. Beckley doesn't, or at least, she doesn't think she does. Their relationship exists beneath a much larger political structure, and the more Beckley learns about the realm, the more she begins to understand that her presence there may matter far more than she ever imagined.

Powerful Immortal × Unassuming FMC

This is one of my favorite dynamics because the contrast between Beckley and Ambrose is almost comical at times. Ambrose is a powerful immortal who has spent his life understanding the rules of his world. Beckley owns a bookstore. She has spent most of her life worrying about ordinary things, living quietly, and believing that the strange parts of the world belonged somewhere far beyond her reach. Then suddenly, that world comes looking for her, and Ambrose is standing right in the middle of it.

Forced Proximity

Sometimes the easiest way to uncover someone's secrets is to put the two of you in a situation where neither of you can simply walk away. Beckley and Ambrose find themselves spending far more time together than either of them probably anticipated, which gives attraction plenty of room to grow and suspicion plenty of room to follow it. The closer Beckley gets to Ambrose, the more she notices, and the more she notices, the more questions she has.

He Knows More Than He's Telling Her

This might be the most important trope of all. Ambrose knows things about Beckley's world that she doesn't, and things about the immortal realm that she has never been taught. Every time Beckley thinks she's finally caught up, another piece of information seems to slip through her fingers. That creates a particular kind of tension I love in fantasy: the feeling that the reader knows there is something underneath the story, but isn't quite sure where to look for it. Because sometimes the mystery isn't about discovering whether someone is hiding something. It's about discovering what they're hiding and why.

So, Why These Two?

At its heart, Beckley and Ambrose's relationship is about uncertainty. Beckley is searching for answers about herself while Ambrose is guarding answers he isn't ready to give her. She is learning that the world is far larger than she believed, while he is watching someone he never expected enter a world he thought he understood. There is attraction between them, but there is also power, secrecy, history, and a great many unanswered questions. And that's what I wanted from their story.

I wanted you to wonder whether you should trust him. I wanted you to understand why Beckley is drawn toward him even when part of her is afraid. Most of all, I wanted you to keep turning the pages because something about their story doesn't quite add up. Because in the Immortal Realm, the most dangerous secrets aren't always the ones someone tells you. Sometimes they're the ones you never thought to question. And Beckley has a lot of questions left to ask.

If My HeartStone Characters Lived in Prythian...

In honor of the new ACOTAR titles releasing, I'm sending my characters to Prythian for a little vacay.

There are certain things authors probably shouldn't admit publicly. Like which of their characters would survive a family dinner together. Which ones would absolutely need supervision. Or, apparently, which courts they would belong to if you dropped them into Prythian.

But when Sarah J. Maas announced the new ACOTAR titles and covers, I immediately started thinking about my own characters and where they would fit. And because I am both a fantasy reader and someone who has spent an unreasonable amount of time building fictional courts, I couldn't resist.

So, for absolutely no reason other than it sounds fun, let's temporarily take the characters of The HeartStone Series out of the Immortal Realm and drop them into Prythian. And before anyone asks, I am sorting them by personality, energy, aesthetic, and general chaos level. Their magical abilities have nothing to do with these choices.

Also, this is completely spoiler-free. I'm only using what readers know from Book One, so if you haven't finished the series yet, you're safe here. Mostly.

Ambrose: Court of Nightmares

Let's start with the easiest one, because I don't think anyone is going to argue with me about this. Ambrose belongs in the Court of Nightmares. Not merely the Night Court. The Court. Of. Nightmares. The Hewn City would take one look at him and probably just hand him a chair.

Ambrose has the kind of presence that makes a room feel smaller when he walks into it. He's accustomed to authority, he's confident in his position, and he carries himself like someone who has never needed permission to take up space. He's also incredibly comfortable with power, politics, and making people wonder what he's thinking. Put him somewhere beautiful, dark, intimidating, and filled with people who know how to smile while hiding a knife behind their backs, and I genuinely cannot imagine him being anywhere else. The aesthetic alone is almost insulting. Give this man a black cloak, a throne, and an ominously lit room and he would probably ask why we took so long to get him there.

Beckley: Summer Court

This one might surprise people. Beckley is a water-based character, yes, but that's not why I'm putting her in the Summer Court. I'm choosing Summer because of something much more personal. Beckley has spent so much of her life living quietly and keeping pieces of herself tucked away. She's thoughtful, reserved, and not naturally inclined to throw herself into the center of a room. But there is another side of her that comes out around the people she trusts. She's funny, she's warm, she's curious, and when she finally allows herself to stop overthinking everything for five minutes, she can actually have a lot of fun.

The Summer Court feels like the kind of place where that version of Beckley could breathe. There's something about its warmth, beauty, water, and sense of freedom that feels like an invitation for her to loosen her grip on the life she's always thought she needed to live. And honestly, I think bookstore-owner Beckley would have an absolute field day wandering through Velaris. She'd probably find a bookstore within the first twenty-four hours. She'd never leave.

Gaia: Day Court

This one was almost immediate. Gaia belongs in the Day Court. If you know Gaia, you know why. She's intelligent, observant, outspoken, and somehow manages to be both the funniest person in the room and one of the people most capable of bringing everyone else back down to earth. She has an instinct for people, she notices things, she asks questions, and she has absolutely no problem saying what everyone else is thinking.

The Day Court's association with knowledge and learning feels particularly fitting for her, but it's also the warmth of the court that makes me love this placement. Gaia has this ability to make people feel like they can breathe around her, even when she's being a complete menace, especially when she's being a complete menace. I also feel like she would adore Helion. Whether Helion would survive Gaia's commentary is another question entirely.

Saar: Night Court

And now we have our second Night Court resident: Saar. But where Ambrose would belong in the Court of Nightmares, Saar feels much more naturally suited to the Night Court itself. There is an intensity to Saar that makes him feel at home among people who understand that darkness isn't necessarily synonymous with evil. He's mysterious, he's sharp, he's not immediately easy to read, and there is a certain wildness to him that makes you feel like there's considerably more happening beneath the surface than he's willing to explain.

I also think he'd appreciate the Night Court's fierce sense of loyalty. Saar doesn't strike me as someone who gives his trust freely, but once that loyalty is earned, I don't think he would give it up easily. Would he enjoy the politics? Probably not. Would he pretend to enjoy them while silently judging everyone in the room? Absolutely.

Abel: Dawn Court

Abel is my Dawn Court choice, and this one is based almost entirely on the feeling I get from him. There's something about dawn that represents possibility, a beginning, the moment when darkness starts giving way to something else. And without getting into anything the reader doesn't know yet, I think that energy suits Abel beautifully. He's mysterious, certainly, but there's something deeply compelling about a character who makes you want to know what exists beyond the surface of what you're seeing.

The Dawn Court also has an association with beauty and knowledge, and I think Abel would fit into a court that carries that quieter kind of elegance. He wouldn't be the loudest person in the room. He wouldn't need to be. He'd sit in the corner, observe everyone, and somehow know exactly what was happening before anyone else did. Which is probably why I would not play cards with him.

Cora: Spring Court

Cora is my Spring Court girl, and I will not be accepting arguments at this time. There is something inherently fitting about putting her somewhere associated with beauty, nature, renewal, and transformation. Cora has an understated quality that makes her particularly interesting to me. She's not the person who needs to dominate every conversation or announce herself when she enters a room. She watches, she listens, she knows more than she always says.

I think the Spring Court's beauty would suit her wonderfully. She would probably appreciate the flowers, the gardens, and the general romantic atmosphere. Whether she would appreciate everything else happening around her is another story. But aesthetically, absolutely. Give Cora a flower crown and a sprawling garden and let me live in the fantasy for five minutes.

Dimitrios: Autumn Court

This one feels almost too obvious once I think about it. Dimitrios belongs in the Autumn Court. There is a severity to him that fits. He's a leader, he's intimidating, and he's deeply connected to hierarchy and loyalty. He's the kind of person who understands that power isn't simply about having authority, it's about knowing how to wield it. The Autumn Court has always felt like one of the more dangerous courts to me because of that combination of beauty and menace, and Dimitrios fits beautifully into that contradiction.

He can be controlled when he needs to be. He can be ruthless when he chooses to be. And I would strongly recommend against giving him a reason to dislike you. Also, let's be honest, the autumn aesthetic works. Dark forests, old castles, firelight, wolves. Yeah. I'm standing by this one.

And There We Have It

So, if my characters somehow wandered through a magical portal and ended up in Prythian, this is where I'm sending them: Ambrose to the Court of Nightmares, Beckley to the Summer Court, Gaia to the Day Court, Saar to the Night Court, Abel to the Dawn Court, Cora to the Spring Court, and Dimitrios to the Autumn Court.

Would they survive? Probably. Would they behave themselves? Absolutely not. Would I trust Ambrose anywhere near the Hewn City? Unfortunately, I think he'd fit in a little too well.

And now I want to know what you think. If you've read The HeartStone Series, tell me where you would put each character. I have a feeling some of you are going to disagree with me, and honestly, I am very prepared for the arguments. After all, what is a fantasy fandom without a little court politics?

With love, Brandi