Power was never the danger. Want was.
On Samhain night, with treachery seated beside the throne and the dead stirring beneath the House of Faces, Macha felt him at her back—steady, lethal, far too close. She was meant to hold Ulaid together, not crave the man sworn to protect her. But desire turned every choice into something dangerous.
Ruairi had already crossed death once. Macha was far more dangerous.
Macha stood before him with fire in her eyes while Ulaid cracked apart around her, and every vow he’d sworn strained toward breaking. He was her blade, her shield, the last thing standing between her and the darkness rising through the court. He was never meant to want her like this.
The dead had always spoken to Breda. She never expected them to speak his name.
As the House of Faces began to fracture, the whispers pulled her toward truths long buried within Ulaid—and toward a shadowed man who felt more like a warning than salvation. The dead were no longer content to whisper.
Cian lived with the damage he helped create—and the woman he could not save.
Old magic bound him to grief, guilt, and a past that refused to stay buried. Love had failed them before. It might fail them again.
As Samhain descends, loyalties fracture, the dead grow restless, and Ulaid begins to unravel.
An absolute must-read for fans of #Romantasy ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Okay, so I picked this up for the Celtic mythology and stayed for Ruairi.
I mean, genuinely. The man had me emotionally invested far earlier than I expected.
There's something about fantasy heroes carrying far too much baggage that gets me every time, and Ruairi definitely falls into that category. Every time another piece of his story was revealed, I became more attached to him.
I loved Macha too. She's not one of those heroines who has to be constantly swinging a sword or making speeches to prove she's strong. She has this quiet determination that made me want to keep following her story.
The romance was exactly what I wanted it to be. Lots of tension. Lots of longing. Lots of moments where I was sitting there thinking, "Will you two please just admit how you feel already?" The chemistry between Macha and Ruairi was there from the start, but it takes time to develop, which made it so much more satisfying.
I also loved how magical this book felt. Not cute magical. Not cosy magical. Ancient, strange, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying magical. The kind of magic that feels as though it existed long before the characters arrived and will still be there long after they're gone.
And the House of Faces?
Absolutely not.
Every time it appeared, I was equal parts fascinated and creeped out.
By the last quarter of the book, I was finding excuses to keep reading. Just one more chapter became three more chapters, and suddenly it was much later than I'd planned.
As soon as I've finished writing this review, I'm probably going to start reading it again. I can't seem to get enough of this story, these characters, or this world.
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Hanna Park
I began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the cat knew. She knows everything.
I write stories that make you laugh, make you cry, and make you love. Thank you, friends, for reading!
In the beginning, there was an empty page.
I am a writer who lives in Muskoka, Canada, with a husband who snores, a hungry cat, and an almost perfect canine––he’s an adorable little shit.
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