The finale to The Culled Crown series. ***** Monroe Benson is a girl made of lies--a girl made of lies who fell in love with a boy who excelled at telling them. The son of a sailor, he'd said. A nobody. Liar. Beautiful liar. Shouldn't she have tasted those lies on his lips? Shouldn't she have known? And even if she hadn't seen it, hadn't thought to look deeper into his past, shouldn't he have told her? Liar. Liar. Lair. He should have been honest. All those nights they'd laid in bed together and he'd never even been who she'd thought he was. Lies. All of it lies. And what would she have done if he'd mustered the courage to tell her the truth? Would she have run from him? As Monroe finds herself imprisoned once more in Oredison Palace, the answers to those broken questions hardly seem to matter anymore. The Culling is not over. There are four girls left. Four girls, all of them goddess-chosen and goddess-blessed. And the crown is not finished with them. The whisper of that roiling, dark power in Monroe's blood has not dimmed, even with tacet suffocating it. The game is not over. That toxicant throne was not sated with the blood of a princess. The throne craves a queen. The goddess craves blood. Erydia craves a revolution. And to end it all...to end the Culling and change the world, the liar---the boy with the golden tattoos and the artist's hands---must die. May the goddess be honored.

"He'd pay me two grand a month to sleep with me?" "No. He'd pay you two grand a 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬." ... Maggie is a college student working as a stripper in Las Vegas when a close friend approaches her with a proposition. High-end escorting. Desperate to gain independence and pay off a variety of debts, the offer seems more than tempting. Cut off from her family and their illegally-gained wealth, she decides to make money with the only thing that is truly hers: her body. As she pursues a profession in sex work as a way to regain control of her life, her dark past comes back to haunt her, throwing quite a wrench into her plans. Maggie tries to mask her previous losses with love in its various forms. But what is the reality of finding true love when your job is getting paid to sleep with other people? ... *Frequent explicit sexual content, intended for 18+ audiences ONLY. This story is stand alone. You DO NOT need to read the first story to understand this one, but there will be a major spoiler in the second half. Please remember to vote and comment!