Raine Whitlock

When Myrren Vale is summoned to the royal palace, she expects suspicion. She expects secrets.
She does not expect him.

In the kingdom of Eirden—where magic hums beneath silk and every smile hides a blade—Myrren serves as a scentcrafter, trained in herbs, toxins, and the silent truths that cling to blood.

The court wants her quiet.
The crown wants her gone.
But Prince Thane… sees her.

Golden, gracious, and far too kind for the thorns surrounding his throne, he draws her into the palace’s glittering heart—offering warmth, safety, and something dangerously close to belonging.

Yet not all eyes in the palace are kind. The king’s ward, Lord Corven, watches her with unreadable silence—as if her very breath carries a truth he cannot ignore.

When nobles begin to die and the scents on their corpses whisper of poisons Myrren once crafted, she realizes the greatest danger is not the court’s corruption, nor the ancient power stirring awake beneath its stones.

It is what love makes you blind to.

When the cursed bell tolls, someone dies.
This time… it’s coming for me.

I never believed the town’s legends—not until the night a crow dropped a thin metal strip at my feet with my name carved into it. Since then, every toll has brought frost-script warnings, eerie deaths, and a shadowed boy who appears out of nowhere… always right before things go wrong.

Callen Roe.
Bound to the bell. Dangerous, magnetic, impossible to trust.
And somehow always a step ahead of my fate.

Then there’s Ezra Quinn—my oldest friend. Steady. Safe.
Except lately he watches me like he’s afraid of losing something he never said out loud.
Jealousy is unraveling him, and I don’t know how to stop it.

As the debt ledger awakens and classmates start vanishing, I’m pulled—along with a handful of survivors—into a deadly game against the cult that forged the curse. The bell demands payment. The ledger keeps writing. And every new secret points back to me.

Caught between two boys and hunted by an ancient debt, I’m running out of time.
I have one impossible choice:

Break the ledger… or pay with my life.