Lanternwright
Free — a standalone prequel novella
She can hear the lie in any soul. She has spent a hundred years perfecting her own.
For a hundred and forty years, Hespera has been the truest voice in the Court of Lights — the master lanternwright who can hear a flaw in any soul, including the one she tells about herself.
Then she's sent to mend Lior, a quiet Keeper whose only flaw is that he cannot stop telling the truth. He has heard what lies beneath the Court's beautiful light: not a god at all, but a living mind, chained and weeping. Now she has heard it too.
To save him, Hespera does what no maker has dared in three centuries. She stops taking the light. She asks it. And she builds a lantern that lies — a vessel that rings true to every ear in the Court, with a hidden hollow where a free soul can grieve in the dark, unheard.
If the High Lanternwright ever hears the hollow, it will cost them everything.
A standalone prequel to The Wildlight Court — a gothic love story about the one freedom a cage can never measure.
For readers of The Knight and the Moth and For the Wolf.
Heat
One sensual on-page love scene.
Content note
Gothic romantasy. Themes of autonomy under institutional control. A hopeful-but-bittersweet ending — a complete love story in itself; the wider series continues in The Wildlight Court.
- Length
- 62 pages
- Published
- 1 January 2026
- Genre
- Gothic romantasy