The Sapling Cage

Lorel has wanted to be a witch for as long as she can remember. She dreams of learning magic, healing the sick, fighting monsters and seeing more of the world than the small town where she and her mother run the stables. The trouble is that all witches are women, and Lorel was born a boy.

The Kingdom of Cekon is in trouble. A strange plague is killing its trees, and witches take the blame. Lorel still wants to join them. When the coven arrives to claim her best friend, she puts on a dress and goes in her friend's place, leaving home and her old self behind.

Inside the coven, Lorel finds friends and starts to learn earth magic from powerful teachers. Outside, a magical blight scars the land, and Duchess Helte, hungry for power, crushes everything standing between her and the crown. Lorel lives with the fear that the people she has come to trust will discover her secret and throw her out, or do worse.

This is fantasy centred on a trans protagonist, written as an own-voices story. It mixes magic, political struggle and self-invention, and it opens a trilogy, Daughters of the Empty Throne.