Darkhistoricalfiction Stories

The night Maelys was born, a storm made a decision for her. A desperate woman, a coerced midwife, and a courtyard where someone died in the rain conspired to place one infant in a palace and erase another from the record entirely. Twenty-two years later, someone has come to unmake it, and she has twenty-two years of righteous fury, a powerful patron, and the specific weapon of a truth that supports multiple stories at once. Raised in the painted corridors and orange-blossom courtyards of Solenir Palace, Maelys knows how to read a room before she enters it, how to wear humor like armor over something more serious underneath, and how to survive in a court that admires her with one hand and doubts her with the other. She has been exceptional here her entire life. She knows what exceptions are for. When the girl she unknowingly replaced arrives with documents, damage, and the kind of righteous anger that is the most dangerous kind because it is not entirely wrong, nothing careful is enough anymore. With a conspiracy threading through the court's most elegant rooms, a bodyguard who has been keeping a report in a locked box for eight years waiting for the right person to receive it, and a crown prince who asks before he touches and is not without fault and is learning the difference between those two facts, Maelys must fight for her name, her life, and the identity she has spent twenty-two years choosing rather than receiving. This is a slow burn interracial historical romance with explicit intimacy, graphic violence, and a world that does not soften its edges for the comfort of anyone in it. It is a story about what is owed and what is chosen, about love as a continuous practice rather than a destination, about darkness that stays and is carried rather than resolved, and about a woman who refuses, repeatedly, in every room that tries to define her, to let anyone else decide who she is. Dark. Tender. Permanent. Earned. ©️ _RelleLebby_ // R. L.

A historical horror fiction following a slow descent into unease, where memory, grief, and the weight of history begin to blur. The story builds in a somber, foreboding tone as the past refuses to stay buried, and the present begins to fracture under it. Disclaimer: This is an early excerpt / opening arc of a larger work in progress.

In the ancient Kingdom of Liu, power is inherited-but fate is not. After the death of Emperor Haoyu Liu, his son Yesú ascends the throne, inheriting not only an empire but the concubines left behind within the palace walls. Among them is Qiang, the youngest and most different of all. She does not seek favor. She does not bow to flattery. And she does not fear the Emperor. Unknown to the court, Qiang once saved Yesú's life when he was hunted by assassins-without knowing his identity, without asking for reward. That single act binds their destinies in ways neither of them chose. As jealousy brews within the palace and truth clashes with deception, an Emperor drawn to honesty faces a woman who never wanted the crown's shadow. In a world ruled by power and silence, one voice dares to remain real. This is a story of strength without arrogance, honesty without fear, and fate that refuses to be ignored.

Seiya, a celestial being created by the Creator in 100 BC, embodies peace and starlight with their golden hair and red eyes. Seiya is neither male nor female, as they were created with features of both the Light goddess Aurora and the Dark goddess Azrael.