The Crown’s Unforgiven Menagerie
In Auvrane, noble magic is not a blessing. It is evidence.
Every ruling house inherits a sinbeast: a living creature born from an ancestral crime so large the Crown chose to cage it, feed it, and call it magic. When an heir comes of age, they must enter the Royal Menagerie, face the beast their family has bred for generations, and force it to kneel.
Nell Aster is a low-born keeper in The Crown’s Unforgiven Menagerie, tasked with scraping blood, bone dust, and old dreams from cages that should never have existed. She has no house, no rank, and no legal name beyond the one the Menagerie gave her.
Then, on the night of the royal succession rite, every sinbeast in the Menagerie kneels to her.
The nobles call it blasphemy. The priests call it contamination. The Crown calls it treason.
The beasts know better.
The First Sin has chosen its witness.
A dark gothic romantasy of forbidden power, court intrigue, monstrous inheritance, and a slow-burn romance between a girl no kingdom allowed to matter and the noble heir trained to silence the truth she carries.