"إلَكْ يِحْرِقْك جَهَنَّم، يا وَسِخ الدُّنْيا" ("May Hell burn you, you filth of this world.") Soraya Abbas didn't come to Russia to fall in love. She came to survive. Half-Indian, half-Egyptian, and the eldest daughter of a family clinging to hope back home, Soraya traded her dreams for a one-way ticket to Moscow-and a job as a digital marketer for a floundering startup. She sends every spare ruble home, lives well-by the grace of God-in a tidy, sunlit flat in a respectable Moscow neighborhood, and still prays the snow doesn't seep into her bones faster than her hope does. Men? She's done with them. If the Church had taken her, she'd be veiled in habit by now far from the kind of men who treat women like disposable luxuries. Then she sees Ajeel Dartagnan. In a velvet-draped booth at an elite Moscow bar, he's on his knees, mouth buried between a socialite's thighs like it's a sacrament. Ruthless. Reckless. A Bratva heir with eyes like shattered ice and a reputation written in bloodstains and broken hearts. Soraya doesn't flinch. She spits her curse in the tongue of her Egyptian grandmother and walks away, convinced their worlds will never touch. She's wrong. Days later, her boss vanishes-abducted over a debt owed to the one man she swore never to see again. Now, her days are spent navigating his icy commands and blistering glances. Her nights? Haunted by the screams outside her window, the gunshots echoing through Moscow's underworld, the bodies left in Ajeel's wake. Because this city doesn't run on laws-it runs on loyalty, lies, and lethal force. And Ajeel? He's rewriting his own rules... with Soraya's name in the margins. But she's no man's plaything. She's a daughter who left everything to keep her family alive. And if Ajeel thinks he can break her, he's never met a woman who's already survived worse than him.

❝Salt clings to her skin, sorrow woven into every grain, and the tides hum her name with a shiver. . . Mariam, sea of bitterness.❞ Bastard-born beneath a moon choked in crimson clouds, Mariam entered the world to the sound of her mother's screams and the distant wails of a drowning kingdom. Her father's face is a shadow she will never know. One of many faceless men whose violence left more than wounds beneath her mother's scales. No magic sings in Mariam's blood. No currents obey her call. The merfolk of Avelmare watch her pass with eyes cold as the deep, their whispers clinging like kelp: Child of a whore. Cursed blood. Spawn of shame. Yet her mother, Lyara, loves her still. Loves her despite the scornful gazes that follow them through coral streets and the silence that chokes the air wherever they swim. Lyara's arms are the only warmth Mariam has ever known. But even a mother's love cannot hold back the tides of prophecy. Long ago, in the abyss where no light dares tread, something ancient stirred. The golden-eyed Nagas rose on the Night of Broken Tides, drowning kingdoms in fear. But they were only heralds. Beyond the world's edge waits the Endless Hunger. Its tar-black blood seeping through the deep, tainting all it touches. And in Mariam's veins, that darkness whispers.

Eighteen-year-old Seraphine Valen's life shatters after a blood-soaked tragedy leaves her the sole survivor. But survival comes with a price-she discovers she wields an unholy power: the ability to command death itself. Her touch can end lives, her will can summon destruction, and the darkness within her is a force she barely understands. Her newfound power makes her the target of the Banes-nightmarish creatures determined to enslave humanity and claim Seraphine as their weapon of ultimate annihilation. Pursued across a world falling to ruin, she is thrust into a deadly game she doesn't understand and cannot escape. When all hope seems lost, Seraphine is drawn into Death's Castle, a place where shadows whisper and the air hums with ancient magic. Within its labyrinthine halls, she encounters a trio of enigmatic allies: a diviner who peers beyond the veil of time, a war vampire with a thirst for both battle and blood, and a battle-hardened brute whose strength is matched only by his loyalty. Together, they unveil the harrowing truth of her ancestry-a lineage intertwined with darkness and light. Yet, as Seraphine grapples with her monstrous heritage, an even greater evil stirs in the void-a primordial darkness that seeks to devour all existence.

"Confidence is just foreplay for disaster," my therapist once said-right before I demonstrated the theory IRL." Nothing screams "I have my life together" quite like a broken heel, face-planting into a man so ridiculously handsome he might literally warp gravity, and my ego left somewhere back on the sidewalk-probably crying into a half-eaten croissant. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Skylar Evans-fresh grad, coding wizard, and caffeine-fueled chaos agent-didn't plan to crash (literally) into Carlos Dartagnan's meticulously dangerous world. But one awkward collision sets off a chain reaction of office sparks, corporate secrets, and eyebrow-raising chemistry that no amount of coffee can debug. Between cryptic codes, shady boardroom maneuvers, and a man who looks at her like she's both the ultimate mistake and the ultimate jackpot, Skylar is about to discover that life's biggest upgrades? They come with zero instructions, a lot of sass, and way too much falling over.