Fae Bundle

A siren with death in her song 
A con artist with dark magic at his fingers 
And a heist only they can pull off… 
… if they don’t betray each other first. 

Lira has until the blood moon to escape her mother’s cruel siren troupe.

Attempting to flee, she gets mixed up with a handsome stranger set on a dangerous mission to reclaim stolen magic.

A heist that pays enough gold to disappear with.

As their group of magical misfits tumbles through unexpected obstacles, Lira is pushed deeper into a mystical world she wants no part of. A realm filled with wrathful fairy courts and dangerous creatures. But when attraction builds and twists are unveiled, Lira isn’t sure where she belongs anymore.

This fast-paced, multiple POV, New Adult fantasy is full of twists and turns, romance, and found family set in a fantastical world teeming with dark magic.

Faye knew the stories. 

Selkies fascinated with humans. 
Merfolk that wrecked ships. 
And sirens who drew people in to their destruction. 

But she didn’t know those tales were real.

Until she met Daron.

Together, they enter a glimmering world full of darkness and magic that Faye never knew existed.

A world that her fate is intertwined with.

Amid harrowing adventures and a friendship that blooms into something more, the tides shift, and inky darkness sweeps in, threatening everything Faye holds dear.

NOTE: This book is the first in an Upper YA/NA fantasy series that features mature situations, some adult language, and two romances (one slow-burn) that lead to mild/moderate steam as the series progresses.

If you loved the adventure and mythology of Percy Jackson and the romance and twists & turns of A Court of Thorns and Roses, you'll love this series full of found family, shifters, magic, dark world-building, and diverse characters.

The weight of the blade strapped to my ankle burned against my flesh. I licked my lips and brushed my sweaty palms against the lace of my dress. No more time for hesitations. This was finally my chance for freedom.

I took a step forward and frowned at my pearl-lined slippers. They looked dreadful pressed against ebony dirt instead of the polished wood floors the cobbler had meant for them to trod upon. I suppose it didn’t matter because he also hadn’t crafted them for a soon-to-be-murderess, but here they were.

Music from the show buzzed through the air. 

Mediocre.

Not that the sirens in our group could truly unleash their talents.

It would probably kill the entire population of this abysmal town.

And it would definitely draw the attention our troupe avoided.

Night had fallen, and stars danced across the sky in the distance. Half the moon peeked behind scrambling tree limbs. In a few weeks the blood moon would appear, then the monsoons would come. Our slow time. This was one of our last performances of the season. The makeshift stage we’d crafted the previous day glowed in lantern light with a crowd huddled around it utterly entranced. The sirens in our group were careful to only use a wisp of their powers, of course. Fae would be drawn towards us if we left too much of a trace of magic. Then someone might find out that our troupe was more than a traveling music show—that we lived illegally among humans, feeding off them. That would cause trouble, and the only one allowed to cause trouble was my mother.

My nose wrinkled at that. I could feel her watching me from behind the tarps that covered the backstage, waiting to see if I’d follow through. I took another step over the muck and hissed as mud smeared the silk of my slipper. A note peeled past my lips, and ice crawled over the ground in lacy patterns. Shit.

I looked back over my shoulder. Mother’s pale blue eyes tightened, deepening the wrinkles over her fair skin, but she didn’t march towards me, snatch my wrist, or growl through her teeth, you’re not a fledgling anymore, Lirasei. You should have better control over your powers by now. So she must not have seen my slip with the ice.

Loose ends are trouble, I could hear her saying, and I shivered.

I shifted back towards the throng. Crowds in small farming villages always had a strong smell to them—hay and sweat and sour milk and the charcoal-tang of fires mingled with the earthy smell of animals. A handful of men pressed close to the edge of the stage beneath the draping branches of an oak tree. Their eyes widened as they watched Margo sweep across the stage, her velvet gown rippling behind her. Easy targets. The one's Mother might go for.

I scoffed. I wanted her to believe my choice, but I wouldn’t go that low. Tonight, I would finally be brave rather than the weak and trembling Lira some others in our group whispered about. Are you sure she’s Palaria’s daughter? Could there have been a mix-up?

I wished their gossip was true.

The magic grew in me like a tumor. It strengthened by the day and made it clear I was the daughter of Palaria, even if I’d proved a disappointment. It showed I was the only one with her blood and therefore the only one who could take her weakening magic without diluting it. Unfortunately, sirens could only birth one child and always a daughter. I was Palaria’s sole heiress. 

I brushed my thumb over my arm where Mother had inked a mark of magic that designated me as her inheritor. These cruel powers were not something I wanted, though. I didn’t want to lead this vile troupe. All I wanted was out. Margo’s voice rang around, and the audience released a breath along with her. I wasted time. I jerked my sleeve down and stepped towards the crowd.

The plan was a simple one. Get pregnant. Hand my only child over to Mother so she could raise her to become the heiress she always wanted. And then I had to end the life of the man I chose tonight.

That was the cost of my freedom.

Cruel but fitting for a siren.

If I were braver, I would have killed Mother and seen if the dark magic of our family went with her. A hundred opportunities had presented themselves in the previous year, but something always stalled me. I couldn’t bear to do it. I was weak, a liability, and prone to hesitation over action. Mother had reminded me of this so much that it felt like a note nested in my mind—a song I could play at any moment.

Not tonight, though. It was time for me to make my own destiny.

I weaved between the people who clapped and cheered, the coarse fabric of their wool skirts brushing against the backs of my hands as I pushed into the midst of the group. Once I’d believed sirens were, if not good, at least neutral. I thought sirens were basically humans who happened to have powers in our song. We were nothing like the manipulative and cruel fairies that terrified people. 

Then I’d returned from the human boarding school where I’d spent my formative years, and Mother had quickly disabused me of that notion. Sirens, it turned out, were every bit as wicked and malicious as fairies.

Margo’s voice rippled on the wind, and I shifted in her direction. If I finally got free of the group, I abandoned her as well. I wasn’t friends with many in our group. But Margo had embraced me when I’d returned five years before. She was the only friend I had here. I gave my head a shake to knock that thought out. She’d be fine. This was the life she wanted.

Margo loved it all—the rich fabrics of the dresses, the rotating crowds and lovers that she found in them. She adored waking up in some mud-flecked town only to spend the day traveling and then falling asleep in the bustle of a massive urban center later the same day. In her spare time, she even hummed the songs we all knew so well they sent a shiver of revulsion down me every performance.

This wasn’t the life for me, though.

I returned my attention to the crowd. I needed to choose someone passing through town, someone whose absence others wouldn’t notice.

A couple stood near the back of the audience against a horse and wagon. The man was tall with a rash of ruddy hair. I would go for him, but of all the immoral, wicked things I’d contemplated doing, stealing a committed person wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t plan to change that.

Something snagged my attention, like a flaming lamp might draw the notice of a moth. A man weaseled up behind the couple and waited for a crashing note to drown the sounds of the world before he popped his arm into the wagon and pulled something out. He slipped around the crowd like a cat keeping to the shadows.

A flicker of torchlight flashed over him briefly, and I smiled.

He had a head of thick, dark hair and stubble grown long enough to give him a rakish appearance. His jacket remained undone at the collar, allowing the warm brown of his muscled chest to show. Here was a man who could use some humility, and with the way he quietly robbed the crowd like a crow snatching seeds from a farmer’s field, he intended to leave the area soon.

Plus, he knew how to slink his way under people’s noses which fit my agenda perfectly.

My luck couldn’t have been better. I took the last step down and eased through the mass of people, my gaze glued on him. I’d found my mark.

When I was a child, my mom took me to the sea.

There we built sandcastles. There we danced like fairies in a ring. There we stood as the ocean sucked at our toes, tucking them down into the sand like clams. I always imagined the ocean was trying to pull me in. As if it wanted me to come and live there like the water horses my mom told me about.

But I was a child then. As I grew older, I didn’t believe that anymore. I didn’t know my childhood imaginings had been right.

***

It was a good way to die. Swimming in the ocean alone. I suppose it was good I didn’t have a lot of opportunities.

The day at the beach wasn’t one either. I never had a chance to be alone. Mom smacked a volleyball. It soared across the blue sky like a bird in flight before dropping. Merri raised her hands, hitting it with a loud thump. Their laughter and conversation drifted to me on the breeze. My breathing mimicked the roaring of the waves and I focused on that. I wished to be alone with nothing but the salt water and crashing waves and inky clouds rolling in for company. 

I floated in the deep, just at the point where the waves formed. My legs dangled in the water, so far from the sand sprinkled with hidden shells far below me. A wave came and I stretched out, making my body part of the sea, like driftwood that might ebb and flow long enough that it became something different entirely, instead of a broken branch, a treasure.

The wave propelled me forward towards the beach. The water kissed my face, my lips tasted of salt, no beginning or ending existed between the ocean and myself. When the water grew too shallow, I turned to walk back into the deep, my toes sinking into the damp sand, but I paused.

It was just a glimmer.  It could have been the scales of a fish or a reflection on the choppy water. But my stomach fluttered. And I still wonder, even now, if there wasn’t something out in the ocean that day, seeking me out.

I wrung my long black hair out. The water dripped back into the sea. And I walked up the beach, dropping into a beach chair, the plastic rungs biting into my legs. I snatched sunscreen out of my bag. Better to put some on before mom reminded me. I had fair skin, yes, but I had never once burned. A fact that didn’t stop my mom from worrying in the least.

As if my thoughts summoned her, mom walked over, dropping into the chair beside me. Her short caramel curls fluttered in the breeze. She drew a book out of her bag and slipped it into her lap. “So, Faye, are you ready to start school this week?” 

I dropped my head against the chair and groaned. “Mom.”

“It’s your senior year. There’s so much to look forward to.”

I slid down in the chair. “Yeah being done.”

“Come on, there has to be something you are looking forward to. Merri is excited.” She gestured to her on the beach where Merri popped a pair of oversized, red sunglasses onto her face.

“Merri is always excited about everything.”

“Have you thought about joining the swim team this year?”

“Mom,” I dragged her name out. “I don’t want to be part of a team.”

She sighed and picked up her book, popping her finger into the page where her bookmark rested and tucking her feet down into the sand. Her eyes skimmed over the page but they were tight, her lips pursed. 

I fiddled with the frayed edge of my beach towel. “What are you reading about?” She flipped the book closed where I could make out the cover. I groaned but had to fight the smile edging up on my lips. “Selkies? Mom. This is a vacation, not work.”

She chuckled. “I teach mythology because I love it.”

“You know everything there is to know about mythology by now. Why not pick up a beach read?”

“There’s always more to learn,” she said, before flipping the book back open.

Songs of Vice:

💎 Fantasy Heist

🧚 Fairy Courts

🛏️ Only One Bed

💏 Fated Mates

😮 Betrayal

👑 Royalty

💕 Multiple Romances

🏳️‍🌈 LGBT Rep

🫂 Found Family

Faye and the Ether:

✨ Magical Realm

🧚 Fairytale Creatures

💕 Friends to Lovers

🌹 Slow Burn

🔮 Prophecies

🔀 Twists & Turns