{"title":"Bundles","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"saint-of-wolves","title":"Saint of Wolves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eA New Orleans homicide detective hunting a string of staged animal-maul murders is forced to trust the wolf-blood heir she should arrest when the bodies form a ritual map beneath the French Quarter—and their forbidden bond may be the final key needed to raise the thing his family has kept buried for two centuries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the time Detective Esmée Vigne reaches the alley, the victim is already in pieces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe patrol cops call it another animal attack. Esmée knows better. Real animals don’t leave symbols in blood. Real animals don’t tear out the same bone from every body. And real animals do not drag the dead toward old stone no city record admits exists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the prime suspect saves her life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThierry Marrow is rich, brutal, impossible to read, and tied to every crime scene in ways no innocent man can explain. His confession should end the case. Instead, it rips it open. He is the last living heir of a wolf-blooded house once sworn to guard New Orleans from a hunger buried beneath the Quarter. Someone is recreating an old summoning rite. Someone inside the city wants the lock broken. And Esmée’s scent, her blood, her very presence around Thierry is changing the pattern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow every hour brings another body, another lie from City Hall, another reason to put a bullet in the man she cannot stop wanting. Because if Thierry is telling the truth, the monster beside her is not the thing she should fear most.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe is what stands in front of it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45967353249849,"sku":null,"price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/saintofwolves.jpg?v=1781737091"},{"product_id":"saint-of-the-deep","title":"Saint of the Deep: Saint of Wolves Book 2","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom: 11pt; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 12.0pt;\"\u003eAs New Orleans begins to fail from the wounds under its streets, a ruined detective and the guardian she refused to sacrifice must uncover the city’s original bargain before its hidden rulers turn them—or the people they love—into the next seal.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 9.0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;\"\u003eWeeks after the chamber collapse, New Orleans is outwardly recovering and privately rotting. Flooding patterns shift where they should not, power and transit failures cluster around old routes, people vanish near forgotten church properties, and the city’s buried machinery begins answering pressure from below. Esmée, blamed for the overpass disaster and tainted by Delia’s death, is forced into hiding near Saint Mercy with Thierry, Odette, Junie, and Milo. She can no longer work as a detective, but she also cannot stop investigating—especially when signs suggest that Alphonse’s death removed only one operator, not the system behind him.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 9.0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;\"\u003eThierry’s survival creates a second crisis. Contact with the breach has altered him: his instincts sharpen, his control frays under stress, and the bond with Esmée grows more reactive, intimate, and dangerous. Odette believes the breach is testing the weakened lock through him as much as through the city itself. When fragments of Father Noe’s missing records and traces of August Vigne’s hidden archive point toward a broader map of old civic sites, Esmée realizes the original pact was never confined to one chamber. The seal was part of a larger order in which political stability, economic growth, and controlled sacrifice were intertwined.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 9.0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;\"\u003eAt the same time, a surviving cover-up faction embedded in city institutions moves aggressively. Their goal is not to heal the breach but to stabilize it cheaply: control the narrative, discredit Esmée, capture Thierry, and force a substitute ritual before the city’s decay becomes impossible to hide. Savard becomes part of the pressure—not necessarily as a true believer, but as an institutional actor willing to choose order over truth. Milo and Junie, now impossible to send back to ordinary life, become both assets and targets as they push for agency instead of protection.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 9.0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 115%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;\"\u003eThe search for a permanent solution leads Esmée and Thierry into the truth August died carrying: the old system endured because every generation accepted that love meant offering someone up. Book 2’s climax turns on whether Esmée and Thierry will repeat that logic—through Thierry’s martyrdom, Esmée’s self-sacrifice, or Milo’s exploitation—or break it and attempt a more dangerous, unproven resealing based on mutual consent rather than managed loss. They may stop the city from choosing a false solution, but doing so exposes a larger war over what New Orleans is built to feed, and what it would become if the old machinery were truly denied.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45971510624313,"sku":null,"price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/saintoftheDeep.jpg?v=1781737517"},{"product_id":"the-dry-earth-lock-saint-of-wolves-book-3","title":"The Dry-Earth Lock: Saint of Wolves Book 3","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen a lock beneath dry inland earth answers the one they awakened in New Orleans, Esmée and Thierry find a town that treats martyrdom as holy—and sees their corpse-free cure as a threat worth killing for.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the aftermath of Pump Station Nine, Esmée, Thierry, Milo, Junie, Odette, and their uneasy police allies live with a victory that has made them more visible, not safer. Milo is alive but traumatized, Junie’s leaks have fractured the official story without defeating it, Thierry’s marked body now feels distant locks like wounds under his skin, and Esmée cannot pretend that the brass key, August’s legacy, or Delia’s contested memory belong only to New Orleans. When Savard risks what remains of his authority to help recover August’s cold-room locker, the cache reveals a missing section of the regional map, a name August feared, and evidence that at least one inland lock has been maintained through voluntary generational sacrifice rather than overt coercion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe trail leads to a drought-scarred parish where the land should be dead but isn’t. Beneath fields, courthouses, irrigation ditches, land offices, and church suppers, Esmée’s blood and Thierry’s marks sense the impossible: sea-pressure under dry earth. The town reveres its guardian line as saints, especially the current heir, who has been raised to believe that dying for the lock is the purest form of civic love. The local witness-descendant wants nothing to do with inherited duty, a young listener is treated as a holy instrument, and a drought-board matriarch guards the bargain through land deeds, relief funds, parish archives, and communal denial.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEsmée arrives intending to prevent another death, but she quickly learns that this lock’s corruption is not identical to New Orleans. The townspeople are not merely victims of a hidden Board; many have built identity, economy, and faith around a beautiful lie. Junie’s instinct to expose everything collides with the danger of detonating a fragile community. Milo demands agency before anyone asks him to listen. Thierry is shaken by the rival guardian’s serene hunger for martyrdom, seeing the version of himself Odette nearly completed. Meanwhile, Maëlle, Roussel, and Lemaire remain alive and useful to the system, and Board agents race to claim the inland lock before Esmée can prove the true method again.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe central crisis becomes not whether Esmée can stop a sacrifice, but whether she has the right—or the wisdom—to bring New Orleans’ hard-won answer to a place whose wound is older, quieter, and socially sanctified. To save the guardian without becoming another custodian, Esmée and Thierry must learn what consent means when an entire town has been taught to call inheritance choice.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLove sounded like tires leaving the driveway.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNot the engine. The engine could cough, stall, change its mind. A hand could still cut the key. A man could still look through the kitchen glass and remember what waited inside.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTires did not lie.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEveryone said August Vigne was devoted. To the city. To the records. To the sealed rooms where careful men kept New Orleans from eating itself alive. At church, women touched my shoulder and told me I should be proud. At school, teachers said his name softly, like duty made absence holy.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI knew what absence was.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI was nine years old, barefoot on cold tile, with Milo burning against my chest and a thermometer blinking red in my hand. His sweat had soaked through my nightgown. His breath came too fast against my neck. The phone cord looped my ankle because I had called the emergency number on the fridge until my finger hurt.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNo one answered.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDaddy had promised he was only going to the porch.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThrough the back door glass, I watched him stop under the light. His shirt hung open at the throat. His work satchel pulled one shoulder low. For one second, his eyes found mine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMy mouth opened.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNothing came out.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMilo whimpered. His small fingers dug into my collarbone.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAugust lifted his hand. Not enough to be a wave. Too much to be nothing.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen he crossed the yard, got in the car, and backed out with the headlights off.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShells cracked under his tires.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThat sound raised me.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAfter that, I learned how to cool a fever with wet towels. How to lie to adults who asked when our father would be home. How to sign forms with a steady hand. How to sleep with one ear open for Milo’s breathing and the other for an engine turning over outside.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy twelve, I could hear leaving before it happened.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy sixteen, I stopped waiting at windows.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy twenty-five, I wore a badge and told myself law was the opposite of August. Law stayed. Law named the dead. Law made men answer for what they took.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnother lie.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe city took Delia and tried to file her clean. Took the blood off her name. Took the shape of her laugh and pressed it into a report built for cowards. Even now, when I see her funeral card, my palms go numb before I can breathe.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNot because she died.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBecause I lived.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAugust was dead by then. Milo had been strapped into machines built by people who knew our blood better than our birthdays. Thierry had almost fed himself to the dark under New Orleans because everyone who loved him had taught him that dying could be useful.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnd me?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI kept running toward screams.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI called it rescue. I called it duty. I told myself if I got there fast enough, no one I loved could become a taillight shrinking in the dark.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen Pump Station Nine broke open.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe lock had never wanted a corpse. Men wanted that. Boards wanted that. Families wanted it once death became a tool they could hand down and call sacred.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThierry and I chose each other alive, and the old thing under New Orleans answered.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor one breath, I thought we had won.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDays later, in a borrowed safehouse, I pressed August’s brass key into the burn across my palm. Delia’s funeral card lay beside my father’s folded map. Milo slept badly in the next room. Thierry was on the floor with black route-lines moving under his skin.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe boards under my feet knocked once.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMy heart hit my ribs.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThere was no water beneath that house.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStill, far inland, something knocked back.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45973783216185,"sku":null,"price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/lock.png?v=1781806431"},{"product_id":"ashes-of-the-fallen-realm","title":"Ashes of the Fallen Realm","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen a blacksmith’s daughter learns her vanished mother helped doom an ancient dragon kingdom and that her own blood can wake the last living wyrms, she becomes the prize at the heart of a rebellion as exiled knights and hidden spies race to use her against the tyrant king who has built his empire on forbidden ash-magic.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBrynne Calder has spent her life in a forge at the edge of the world, hammering iron beside a father who never says her mother’s name.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen the king’s riders burn her village looking for a girl with a scar shaped like a crown.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy dawn, Brynne is running with a band of outlawed knights, a dead rebel messenger at her feet, and one impossible truth in her blood: she carries the lost dragon-oath of the Fallen Realm, the shattered kingdom the crown erased from history.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe rebels want a symbol. The exiles want a queen. The king wants her alive long enough to chain the last dragons to his war.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut the deeper Brynne is dragged into the uprising, the worse the truth becomes. Her mother was no martyr. She was one of the architects of the old realm’s destruction. And the prophecy now gathering armies around Brynne may not promise salvation at all. It may be a map back to the same fire that ruined the world the first time.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTo break a tyrant, Brynne must decide what to inherit: her mother’s guilt, the rebels’ hope, or the dragons’ hunger.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45973879357497,"sku":null,"price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/AshesoftheFallenRealm.jpg?v=1781814437"},{"product_id":"the-beacon-mountains-ashes-of-the-fallen-realm-book-2","title":"The Beacon Mountains: Ashes of the Fallen Realm Book 2","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen three mountain beacons answer Varesh’s awakening, Brynne must reach them before crown remnants, rebel splinters, and oath-bound guardians turn the freed dragon into the cornerstone of a deadlier realm.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBook 2 begins in the direct aftermath of Emberwake’s collapse. Brynne is alive but blood-burned, bonded to Varesh, and fleeing with Prince Orenn as the fortress burns behind them. Below, Tarin and Calde must escape through the ruins while Maelor’s leaderless rebels and surviving crown forces converge, and Ysoria’s fate remains uncertain after she stayed behind, wounded, to prevent Orenn from becoming a hostage-story. The realm has not been liberated so much as decapitated: Theskar is dead, Maelor is gone, the rebellion is splintering, and the public ash-memory of Emberwake’s crimes has ignited panic, denial, vengeance, and worship in equal measure.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVaresh drives Brynne toward the three fires burning in the eastern mountains, insisting they are old signals meant for dragons, not humans. At the first beacon, Brynne encounters the Keepers of the First Signal, an oath-bound mountain confederacy descended from houses that survived the Fallen Realm by guarding sealed vault roads. The Keepers claim the road network is destabilizing after Emberwake’s destruction, and that Brynne’s blood must be surrendered willingly to stabilize it before other dragons wake in rage. They do not speak like Theskar or Maelor, but their logic is familiar: one life, one bloodline, one sacrifice to preserve order.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAs Brynne moves between beacon factions, each citadel offers a different truth. One faction believes dragons must be freed at any human cost. Another believes the roads must be claimed before crown remnants or rebels do. A third claims Elara Vale once helped design a containment plan that is now failing. Elara’s shadow grows sharper: she may have lit one of the signals, may be trying to prevent a catastrophe, and may still be willing to use Brynne to finish what began at Barrow Keth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMeanwhile, Orenn’s presence threatens every negotiation. To crown loyalists he is the last legitimate royal body; to rebels he is a hostage; to mountain houses he is proof that crowns always return. Tarin’s survival also becomes dangerous when rumors spread that his blood can open lesser roads. Brynne’s central struggle is no longer simply refusing ownership, but deciding what responsibility remains after refusal. If she will not be queen, weapon, saint, or sacrifice, can she still lead others through the consequences of the power she helped wake?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe book builds toward the revelation that the beacon network is not merely summoning Varesh—it is waking the buried choices of the Fallen Realm. Unless Brynne can uncover who controls the First Signal and what Elara truly sealed beneath the mountains, the dragon roads will become the foundation of a new empire before the old one’s ashes cool.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45973983035449,"sku":null,"price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/Beacons.jpg?v=1781821867"},{"product_id":"saint-of-wolves-5-ebooks","title":"Saint of Wolves (5 Ebooks)","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe fear was never that my mother would die.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIt was hearing her at the door and knowing the night had just gotten worse.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn daylight, people adored her. She could pull her mouth into a sad little smile, touch a wrist, lower her voice, and make strangers feel cruel for doubting her. Teachers said she was trying. Church women said life had not been kind to her. Men offered rides, groceries, money, mercy.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThey got ten polished minutes.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI got the key missing the lock at one in the morning.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI knew the sounds. Metal scraping. A shoulder hitting the frame. The pause before the first step. From that alone, I could tell if she was drunk, high, furious, or so gone she might look right at me and see a wall.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe night I still carry was summer-hot and airless. Milo had fallen asleep on the couch with the television flashing blue over his face. I was fourteen, stirring boxed macaroni, telling myself the same lie I always told: if food was ready, maybe she would eat; if she ate, maybe she would sleep; if she slept, maybe nothing in the apartment would get broken.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen headlights slid across the kitchen wall.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMy stomach dropped.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI got to the door before she did. The hall smelled like wet concrete and stale beer. One shoe was gone. Mascara had bled under her eyes. Somebody else’s smoke clung to her hair. When she saw me, she smiled like I was the answer to a question she had forgotten asking.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Baby.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen she fell into me.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHer weight slammed the breath out of my chest. The smell hit next. Liquor. Sweat. Sweet rot under cheap perfume. Milo woke up crying in the next room while I dragged her inside with both arms locked around her ribs.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI got her to the bathroom.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThat part never left my hands.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHer wrist slipping through my grip. Her shoulder striking the tub. Tile biting through my knees. I held her hair while she vomited between us, hot and sour, and the plastic shower curtain stuck to my bare arm in the steam. She was crying by then, but not because Milo was sobbing for her. Not because I was fourteen and kneeling in her mess.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBecause she had lost an earring.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI found it under the toilet.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA tiny gold hoop. Warm from the floor.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShe looked at it in my palm and laughed. Clear. Mean. Awake in the worst way.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen she said, “This city eats what you leave unattended.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI did not know if she meant herself.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYears later, I still thought she meant me.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAfter that, childhood narrowed into chores and waiting. Good mornings that made fools of us. School lunches packed like apologies. Then the vanishings. Calls to hospitals. Long sits outside county lockup. Men in and out. Bills tucked under sugar bowls. I learned how to sign forms, stretch groceries, lie to teachers, and keep Milo behind me when the door opened.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen she died, everyone got gentle.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThey said she loved us. They said addiction was an illness. At the funeral, women who had never climbed our stairs held my face and called me strong.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMy throat tightened so hard I thought I might choke.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStrong was what people called a girl nobody came back for.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSo I built my life around what could not charm me. Reports. Timelines. Evidence. I learned how to make a room surrender the truth it was hiding. I learned to trust blood before tears, paper before promises, the body before the mouth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat hurt me taught me one rule: need is not love.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat I feared becoming was simpler. A woman who mistakes rescuing someone for being chosen by them.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat life had already taken felt simpler still. Rest. Trust. The right to hear a door open without bracing.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnd still, some hard stupid part of me wanted one thing that would stay.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe night before the first body dropped in the Quarter, my phone buzzed just after midnight.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnknown number.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI almost let it ring.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen I answered, and a man I had never heard before said, “Detective Vigne, if your brother walks home alone tonight, he won’t make it there.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46044306669625,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/SaintofWolves.png?v=1782312115"},{"product_id":"the-veilborn-throne-series-bundle","title":"The Veilborn Throne (Series Bundle)","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor seven centuries, the six races of Vaelthyr have survived behind living walls of blood, thorn, moonstone, ironroot, starlight, and fire.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe walls were called mercy.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThey were prisons.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen a vampire hunting party crosses illegally into the fairy realm, dawn leaves one fairy prince dead, one sacred grove butchered, and one vampire heir chained at a human gate with blood on his mouth and an hour missing from his mind.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAuren Talspar, heir to the human war command, is ordered to break him.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePrince Liozhar Nocten, elegant, starving, and guilty of everything except murder, refuses to confess to a crime that would ignite the world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThen a fairy curse hidden in Liozhar’s blood drags them both into the dead prince’s final memory. Auren sees human flame at the murder scene.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHis own realm was there first.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNow captor and prisoner must hunt the truth through courts, war camps, poisoned forests, and bleeding walls. But their bond awakens something older than law.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA child.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA throne.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnd a choice no kingdom should own.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"August Publishing House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46112682278969,"sku":null,"price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/4774\/5849\/files\/TheVeilbornThrone_TheOldRoomsofNoctyraBook4.jpg?v=1784047666"}],"url":"https:\/\/augustpublishinghouse.com\/collections\/bundles.oembed","provider":"August Publishing House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}