A prince may indulge every pleasure—except the one that truly matters.
Huo Baishin has spent most of his life trying—and failing—to become the person others expected him to be. Too sensitive for the healing halls and too ill-suited for the quiet cruelty of court politics, he retreats into the one craft that has ever made sense to him: through color, light, and the fragile details others overlook, Baishin has learned to understand the world—and sometimes to survive it.
Dorian Vanserra, second son of Autumn, is sharp-tongued, decadent, and dangerously charming. A prince raised among ambition and blood, Dorian moves through court life like fire through dry leaves: provoking, entertaining, and rarely denied what he wants. Except when it comes to what truly matters.
What follows is not a love story that unfolds in safety, but one that survives in fragments: stolen nights in foreign courts, hurried reunions in shadowed corridors, years spent apart when politics demand distance and loyalty demands silence. Across decades of alliances, wars, and shifting thrones, they learn the slow, painful art of finding each other again and again.
A prince may indulge every pleasure—except the one that truly matters.
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Baishin was staring at him. Color still lingered across his cheeks, though he tried to straighten slightly, clearly unsure whether he should bow or flee.
“Prince Dorian,” Baishin said quietly.
Dorian tilted his head, studying him for a moment with open curiosity. Then, without missing a beat, “Do you even like females?”
Baishin’s almond-shaped eyes widened at once. He did not answer.
It made Dorian’s smile deepen, slow and knowing. “They were rather obviously flirting with you.”
“It was just conversation,” Baishin murmured.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Baishin’s gaze dropped immediately, the color in his cheeks deepening as though the topic itself were far too direct for comfort. The reaction was answer enough and Dorian let out a soft laugh.
“I thought so.” He stepped closer. One arm lifted casually to rest against the pillar beside Baishin’s shoulder, effectively hemming him in between the stone and Dorian’s own body without ever quite touching him. The movement was lazy, confident.
Baishin swallowed. Up close, the faint scent of peach blossoms grew sweeter, deeper, an instinctive reaction the male clearly did not know how to conceal.
His gaze slid briefly down Baishin’s body before returning to his face. “Most of them prefer a male who intends to put them on their backs.” Then Dorian leaned closer, his voice dropping as his mouth neared the male’s ear.
“And you,” he added with quiet amusement, “look very much like someone who prefers being the one bent over.”
A slow breath left Baishin, shoulders stiff with tension. When he finally turned his head to look at Dorian, the expression there was that of a startled creature that had already decided escape was impossible.
A story of visions, voices, and the long road from silence to choice.
When her visions sharpen into nightmares and the voice in her mind begins to hollow her out, Elain Archeron is deemed too fragile, too strange, too dangerous to keep in Velaris. Sent to Autumn, she must survive a house of daggers and fire while wrestling with the shadow of an ancient bargain that binds her fate to Koschei’s rising power.
Lucien Vanserra refuses to let her vanish into silence. Between suspicion from his brothers and the weight of his own fractured loyalties, he offers Elain steadiness where she expects only another demand she cannot meet. In lavender fields, quiet libraries, and under a sun she struggles to trust, he becomes the one constant she cannot ignore.
Between them, the bond hums—unyielding, undeniable, and alive. Trust is forged in laughter and fury alike, in moments that burn as much as they heal. To claim it would mean choosing each other against the weight of destiny, secrets, and the darkness already whispering at Elain’s door.
This continuation of the Unforged Hearts series follows Elain and Lucien as they confront the very things they have been running from—the past that shaped them, the present that binds them, and the future that waits in shadow and light.
Original Characters — Ariston & Siobhan
Chapters: 24
Words: 100k
Under the Mountain, everything is a cage.
Siobhan Willowwood is a Spring-born fae, given to the Autumn Court as payment for her family’s debt. Traded like a possession, she finds herself bound to Beron Vanserra’s service—little more than a maid in a house of fire and knives. Survival means silence, obedience, and swallowing every spark of defiance that once made her free.
On the night of Calanmai, she dares to steal one last taste of freedom. Masked and glamoured, she slips into the celebration with her friends—dancing, laughing, and tasting what it means to live as herself. In the firelit chaos, Siobhan crosses paths with a lion-hearted male who will haunt her long after the mask falls away.
Ariston Vanserra is Autumn’s commander, a general who shoulders the burden of his court’s survival. He has sacrificed want for duty, silence for loyalty, and keeps his family from tearing itself apart with nothing but discipline. The hummingbird girl of Calanmai should have been just a memory. Instead, she resurfaces in the most dangerous place of all—his father’s house—no longer a fleeting dream but a servant bound by debt.
The hummingbird and the lion circle closer, bound by secrets, power, and a hunger neither can name.
Elain’s voice was quiet, steady. “Call for Helion.”
She hesitated for a moment before speaking again, her fingers still idly tracing over the fabric of the blanket. “I felt it,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. “When Thesan suggested it, I felt... hesitation. You didn’t like the idea.”
I stilled.
Years. Years of waiting, of pleading in silence, of hoping that one day—just one day—she might acknowledge what had been tethered between us from the moment I had first laid eyes on her. And now, twice she had felt something through it. First, anger. Then, hesitation. The bitter irony curled deep in my chest. But I met her gaze, my voice firm. “I will speak to Helion, Elain. If there’s even a chance he can help, I’ll take it. I’d do anything for you.”
She inhaled sharply at that. And then, before I could brace for it, she moved. Her arms wrapped around my waist, warm, hesitant but certain. I barely had time to react before she whispered, “I don’t deserve you.”
A sharp, visceral ache cut through me. I tightened my grip around her, pressing my lips to the crown of her head. “You deserve so much more.”
She didn’t argue but I felt her shaking her head. Elain held on, as if I were the only thing keeping her tethered to the present, to herself. Slowly, gently, I guided her back until we were lying down, just as we had that other night. I held her close, wrapped around her entirely, my hand tracing slow, soothing circles along her shoulder, down her arm. Her head rested against my chest, her breath warm against my skin. It was natural, effortless, as if we had done this a hundred times before.
After seeing the reaction to the last chapters of The Gathering and the Treasure, especially the scenes where Elain interacts with Azriel and Lucien, I feel like I need to clarify my intentions with this story.
First, let me start by saying—there’s a reason I put Elain’s POV in first person. Elain’s story isn’t about romance first. It isn’t about a love triangle. It’s about her—her mind, her fears, her struggle to define herself. Writing her in first person was meant to pull you into her head, into the confusion and turmoil she doesn’t even fully understand. It was meant to show you that even when she acts, she’s not always sure why she’s doing it.
And yet, after these last chapters, many people were quick to judge her. To call her selfish, cruel, even unloyal. But if you truly read those scenes you’d see that what happened with Azriel wasn’t about love, not even about desire. It was about avoidance. And that’s exactly why the moment with Lucien hits so hard.
And the irony is—Nesta does the exact same thing in canon, she uses sex as as escapism, seeking out Cassian when she needs to feel something because she can’t handle her own pain. Usually people who read Unforged Hearts are the ones who do everything to defend Nesta. So what was different when I wrote (my) Elain?
Why do people accept my version of Nesta's trauma and healing, but act like Elain should already have everything figured out? Because of Lucien? Because he’s been patient and kind and doesn’t deserve this? But this isn’t about Lucien. And the fact that so many people made it about him makes me want to write this so badly.
The scene with Azriel was never meant to be romantic. It was supposed to feel wrong, desperate—like Elain was reaching for something, someone, just to avoid facing herself. It wasn’t intimacy; it was avoidance. And if you look at how that scene started, it was already wrong before they ever touched. She wanted to speak, but she couldn’t. That voice—the one that fills her with insecurity, desire, doubt, and temptation—was gagging her, stopping her from expressing herself in any way other than with her body. And she gave in to it.
And then there were the shadows—binding her. Literally and metaphorically. Shadows that restrained her hands, that held her in place, that wrapped around her as if she couldn’t move on her own. Sure, she wanted it in that moment, but there’s a difference between desire and control, between reaching for someone freely and reaching for them because you have nowhere else to go. And that’s the entire point—she had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to put the things clawing inside her, so she put them into him.
That’s why, when it was over, it felt empty. That’s why she ran from the room.
But the scene with Lucien? That was honest. That was her being forced to face herself. She tried to push him away, tried to make him angry enough to leave, but Lucien has always seen through her. He gives her space but doesn’t let her hide. And when he asks her if she sees a future with Azriel, the moment breaks—because that’s the real problem, isn’t it? The future.
She sees a future with Lucien. And it terrifies her.
The bond snapping isn’t a happy moment for her, it’s a horrifying one. Because it confirms what she’s been running from this whole time. And when she tells him If we stay together, you’ll die, she isn’t being dramatic—she saw it. She is a seer. She is afraid of what she saw, of what she can't run from.
Lucien doesn’t back away.
Instead, he says, If I must die, I’d rather spend the days I have left with you.
Once again, Lucien doesn’t let her hide. Doesn’t let her avoid the truth, herself, or the future. But what he does—what he always does—is give her the choice. And that is what terrifies her most. Because a choice means responsibility. A choice means facing her own desires, her own needs, her own fears.
So yes, I knew these scenes would upset people. But what I didn’t expect was the way she was going to be treated. When I wrote with the intantion of showing that she isn’t selfish. She isn’t cruel. She is a woman caught between wanting control over her choices and being terrified of what those choices mean.
Of course, this also shows that I have a lot to work on in my writing—to make it easier to convey my intentions, to ensure that the emotions I’m trying to build translate the way I hope they do. If the scene with Azriel didn’t make it clear enough that something was wrong, or if the contrast with Lucien wasn’t as strong as I intended, then that’s on me as a writer. I want to get better at crafting these nuances, at making sure the depth of Elain’s internal conflict isn’t just something I know but something that reads as undeniable. I’ll keep working on it, refining it, and learning from these reactions—because at the end of the day, my goal is for the story to speak for itself.
By midday, the landscape shifted, the scent reached me first—a gentle, heady fragrance carried on the wind, sweet and soothing all at once. Then, as we crested a small rise, the field unfolded before us.
Lavender.
Endless rows of it stretched beneath the open sky, the purple blooms swaying with the breeze like rippling waves. The scent wrapped around me, thick and intoxicating, settling deep in my chest. It felt like stepping into a dream—Lucien slowed his horse, watching me carefully. "I thought you might like this," he murmured.
Like this? My throat tightened. Like this wasn’t enough of a word for what it felt like to be here, for the way the sunlight turned the lavender a hundred different shades of violet, for the warmth of the earth beneath us, for the way the quiet wrapped around me like a soft embrace. I couldn’t find words, so I simply met his gaze, and whatever he saw in my expression made the corner of his mouth lift in quiet satisfaction.untouched, timeless, entirely separate from the world we had left behind.
Slowly, he dismounted, moving with the same effortless grace he always did, then reached up to help me down. His hands found my waist, firm and steady as he guided me from the saddle, and for a moment, I lingered—closer than I should have been, close enough to feel the heat of him through our clothes, close enough that the scent of him—apples and sun-warmed spice—melted into the lavender. I stepped back before I could do something foolish. Before I could forget myself.
Lucien, to his credit, only let out a breath, something almost like a chuckle, before turning away. "Come on," he said, softer now. "Walk with me."
I followed him into the lavender, the flowers brushing against my fingers as we moved through the field. The hum of bees drifted in the air, the sun warm on my skin. It was peaceful, achingly so. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I let myself be in the moment. Not thinking of Velaris, or my visions, or the voice in my head, or the way I had spent so long running from the bond that tethered me to him.
Just this. Just now.
“I do like it,” I admitted softly.
His lips twitched into the faintest smile, but he only nodded. As we wandered deeper into the lavender field with the steady presence of Lucien at my side—everything felt… light. As if, for once, I could exist without the weight of expectation pressing down on me.
