Into the Heartless Wood

A forest presses against the edge of a kingdom, and its siren song draws men and women to their deaths. At its centre lives a witch queen with eight tree siren daughters. For centuries they have fed souls to the heartless tree, and its power has spread their territory of ash, birch and oak.

Owen Merrick lives on the forest's border, where he charts the stars for the king in his father's observatory. He has never crossed the garden wall. Then his sister goes missing, and he has to enter the wood to look for her.

There he meets Seren, one of the witch's daughters. She chooses to spare his life. Owen cannot stop thinking about her: her birch-pale skin, the violets that bloom in her hair. He returns to the trees every night to see her, and the two fall in love.

Then the constellations shift, and the stars point to a coming war between the witch queen and the king. Seren is bound to fight for her mother. Owen is made to join the king's army. The fantasy is a romance between two people on opposing sides, set against a conflict that neither kingdom looks able to win and that could destroy both.