The Circle of Eight Saga · Book One
Forged in Iron & Ash
She makes blades for a living. He was sent to bring her in.
A slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romantic fantasy from Helen Collins. Eight realms, eight fated pairs, and one mark that could unite them all.
Coming soon to Amazon Kindle
Book One · Aurelia, the mortal realm
Forged in Iron & Ash
Seraphine Vale has kept her late father's forge burning and her brother alive on stubbornness alone.
Now Finn is wasting away from a sickness no herbwife in Caldmere can name, the crown wants eleven silver she doesn't have, and the only healers who might save him are the old kind. The kind the king has spent forty years wiping out.
Captain Kael Ironwood has given the King of Aurelia ten years of loyal service, and stopped believing in him somewhere along the way. His orders are simple. Bring in the smith and the boy, alive. Don't ask why.
But Sera carries a birthmark on her wrist that she has never understood, and something old and patient is already hunting it. On the road north, the captain sent to arrest her may be the only person she can trust.
Enemies first. Allies by necessity. Something more by the end.
- Enemies to lovers
- Fated mates
- Slow burn
- Birthmark prophecy
- Feisty heroine
- Mortals & witches
- Nice & spicy
Open-door romance, written for adult readers.
Seraphine “Sera” Vale
Blacksmith & blade-maker
Clever enough to recognise a bad idea and stubborn enough to chase it anyway. Doesn't do fragile. Doesn't wait for rescue.
Kael Ironwood
Captain of the King's Guard
Loyal. A follower of rules. His father's son in every way that matters, right up until he meets Sera.
Finn Vale
Sera's brother
Eighteen, sharp-eyed and wry, even when he can barely stand. The charming one in the family, and he knows it.
The first page
Prologue: The Green Cloak
The harbour bell had rung hours ago, and Fishgate had gone quiet in a way Ingrid Vale didn't like.
She stood at the window above the forge with her palm flat against the cold glass. Rain ran down it in crooked lines. Below, the street lay black and empty under a single wavering lamp. Caldmere was never truly silent. Dogs barked at drunks and cats and the turning tide, and there was always somebody singing badly on the way home.
Tonight there was nothing at all.
Behind her, Tomas snored in the big bed, one arm flung across the space where she should have been. Sera slept on the low bed by the hearth. She was seven years old, curled round her rag doll and scowling at something in her dreams. In the cot Finn made a small, cross noise. Ingrid had half turned towards him before she caught herself.
Minutes. If she was lucky, she had minutes.
The Circle of Eight Saga
Eight realms.
Eight fated pairs.
One mark.
Long ago, the Aeons sundered the eight realms from one another, afraid of what they might become if they ever stood together.
The mark
Once in an age, eight women are born at the same moment, one in every realm. Each carries the same wheel of suns and moons on the inside of her right wrist.
The bond
Each book follows one realm and one fated pair, from enemies or strangers to lovers. Every story stands on its own two feet and leaves a door open to the next.
The reckoning
Mortals, vampires, dragons, fae, demons, angels, shifters and witches. Eight marks, eight keys, and a hidden ninth realm that would rather they never met.
The series
The Books
The world
The Nine Realms of Caelithia
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