A Soul to Keep

Reia has spent her whole life blamed for a demon attack that killed her family, shunned by everyone in her village as a harbinger of misfortune. When the next offering to the Veil comes due, she's given an impossible choice: prison, or sacrifice to the monstrous Duskwalker said to be approaching. What she finds instead of a monster is Orpheus, whose skull-like face and glowing eyes hide a lonelier, gentler creature than the stories ever suggested. Each decade he trades a human offering for a ward that keeps the Veil's demons at bay, and each time, the brief companionship that follows ends too soon. He never expected this one to be different. A Beauty-and-the-Beast-inflected romantasy and the first book in the Duskwalker Brides series, this is a slow-burn, forced-proximity romance between a woman with nothing left to lose and a monster with nothing left to hope for.