A Garden of Blooming Bones

A dark fairy tale where beauty grows from death and love is a dangerous vow

Salazar, a human necromancer known as the Carrion-Eater, has helped the dryad king Mintalon win a devastating war. His reward is not gold, but a daughter of the court—one chosen to travel with him and restore his barren lands. His choice is met with disbelief when he claims Talia, the feared bastard known as Deathflower: daughter of the fae king and a human witch.

Raised among the fae after her mother’s sacrifice, Talia has always existed out of place. While other dryads draw power from the living song of nature, her magic blooms only from corpses—beautiful, lethal, and deeply unsettling. In Everwood, even her two older sisters shun her, and she finds companionship and protection only in Jara, her youngest sister.

Beyond the living lands of the fae lie the Ashlands, Salazar’s domain: a world of bone and silence, where the Earth no longer sings and nothing should grow. There, far from courtly intrigue, Salazar teaches Talia to face the power she fears most. From death itself, she makes a garden bloom—dark, violent, breathtaking. In those lifeless lands, Talia begins to trust, and Salazar—who understands solitude and loss—finds himself irrevocably drawn to her.

But when the time of the pact ends, Talia must return to Everwood, only to discover that home offers her no refuge. Her growing power turns her into a threat, a weapon, a prize to be claimed. As factions close in and her father retreats behind silence and authority, Talia is forced to confront a final truth: the living world has no place for her—though the dead one might.