New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn, Claire Legrand, makes her stunning adult debut with A Crown of Ivy and Glass, a lush, sweeping, steamy fantasy romance series starter that’s perfect for fans of Bridgerton and A Court of Thorns and Roses.
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SYNOPSIS
Lady Gemma Ashbourne seemingly has it all. She’s young, gorgeous, and rich. Her family was Anointed by the gods, blessed with incredible abilities. But underneath her glittering façade, Gemma is deeply sad. Years ago, her sister Mara was taken to the Middlemist to guard against treacherous magic. Her mother abandoned the family. Her father and eldest sister, Farrin—embroiled in a deadly blood feud with the mysterious Bask family—often forget Gemma exists.
Worst of all, Gemma is the only Ashbourne to possess no magic. Instead, her body fights it like poison. Constantly ill, aching with loneliness, Gemma craves love and yearns to belong.
Then she meets the devastatingly handsome Talan d’Astier. His family destroyed themselves, seduced by a demon, and Talan, the only survivor, is determined to redeem their honor. Intrigued and enchanted, Gemma proposes a bargain: She’ll help Talan navigate high society if he helps her destroy the Basks. According to popular legend, a demon called The Man With the Three-Eyed Crown is behind the families’ blood feud—slay the demon, end the feud.
But attacks on the Middlemist are increasing. The plot against the Basks quickly spirals out of control. And something immense and terrifying is awakening in Gemma, drawing her inexorably toward Talan and an all-consuming passion that could destroy her—or show her the true strength of her power at last.
EXCERPT
Flustered, I finally managed to unlock the door and peered inside, my heart suddenly pounding with a giddy sort of fear. “We have perhaps a half hour before anyone gets up from the dinner table,” I said, “so I suggest we search quickly.”
When Talan didn’t respond, I shot him a look over my shoulder. “Is there a problem?”
The expression he wore—sad, a little shocked, a little angry, all swiftly stifled—sent a chill of dread rolling down my back. I quickly took stock of my body but sensed nothing of his power’s presence on me.
Even so, though I’d checked the mirror ten times before leaving my room, it suddenly felt as if all the places on my arms and face that I’d struck earlier that day had bloomed into vivid life. Talan quickly looked me over head to toe, his eyes lingering on the lace trim of my nightgown’s wide collar—and then found my eyes once more.
I stared at him, dry-mouthed. It wasn’t possible for him to know what I had done in my rooms. There was no physical sign of it. He was not currently using his power; I would have known. My body ached as it normally did. My stomach sat in its perpetually queasy knots. Talan’s power had brought comfort, and a strange, reassuring nearness, and at the moment I felt nothing of the sort.
“What is it?” I laughed a little, as if he were a preposterous creature. “Examining me? Do I satisfy?” I paused, flashed him a smile. “Maybe you see something you like?”
“Gemma…” he said quietly, his voice achingly tender. But then, after another moment of searching my face, whatever had come over him was gone. He returned my smile—a small quirk of his lips that made my heart flutter.
“The moonlight suits you,” he said simply, his eyes soft. He opened his mouth again, shifted a little. I held my breath. Would he say something else? What did I want him to say?
But he simply moved past me into the office, his hand brushing my sleeve as he glided by. “Remind me why we can’t just follow your father around until he leads us to Ravenswood himself?”
I shook myself and hurried in after him, leaving the door ajar. If someone found us, we would tell them I’d been giving the curious Mr. d’Astier a tour of the house, hoping it would distract me from my headache.
“That would be too great a risk,” I replied. “Father’s an Anointed sentinel. He’d either move too quickly for us to follow or hear us creeping along behind him, and then…” I swallowed hard, spooked by my own imaginings. “Well, he’d no doubt lock me in my rooms forever and put guards at the door night and day. You he’d probably just murder.”
“Ah. A fine reason indeed.” Talan looked around at the enormous office, scratching the back of his head with a grim smile. “Searching his office without his permission it is, then. Where does one even begin with such a crime?”
“I doubt Father would leave a map of the estate’s greenways just lying about,” I said, “but he and Farrin speak in code, play games together. What if something happened to him and she needed access to his private affairs? He might have left clues for her around the office, telling her where to find things.”
“A map of objects and secret jokes,” Talan said, nodding as he perused the bookshelves. “An interesting idea.”
A pang of longing arrowed through my chest. I ignored it, beginning a careful search of the papers scattered atop Father’s desk. “Yes, well, they’ve always had their little secret language. I think Farrin started it after Mother left to entertain Father, distract him from himself.”
I stopped, clamping my mouth shut. My family’s stories—not the rumors or legends but the true, painful ones—were not anyone’s business but our own.
“He must have grieved terribly in her absence,” Talan said, his back to me. “And that was your sister’s way of helping.”
“Indeed,” I said lightly, “and it seemed to work. They’ve been the best of friends ever since.”
“Does that bother you?”
I riffled through a stack of papers with such haste that I nearly ripped one. “I’m glad they have each other. Farrin has few friends, and Father even fewer. Not real ones anyway. They need each other.” I flung down the papers in disgust. “These are nothing interesting, just financial accounts. I suppose there could be some code embedded in them, but gods, I’m no scholar. We’d need Gareth for help with that.”
“Are there books they mention often?” Talan asked. He pulled a book down from one of the shelves lining the room and blew a light coating of dust off its woven brown cover. “Or characters, places, historical figures? Maybe the things they talk about in casual conversation, things no one would bother listening too closely to, hold clues.”
“Perhaps,” I said, only half hearing him. I stood near the desk, gazing distractedly at the floor. Saying Gareth’s name had reminded me of seeing Mara at Rosewarren, her cryptic words, her transformation into a creature more at home in the Old Country than here in Edyn.
Too much time had passed since that day, during which I’d stubbornly shoved Mara’s frightening strangeness to the back of my mind. I needed to speak to Gareth, and Farrin too, and I needed to see Mara again. I needed to find the greenway that led to the Basks’ estate, engineer a scheme that would tear them down and earn me Father’s praise, and insinuate Talan into the next few weeks of high society parties, maybe even the queen’s masque the following month, and find this demon and pay him to fix me, and—
I needed—
I whirled away from Talan to hide my face, nearly screaming with frustration. The panic had come—stupid me, I had let it come, I hadn’t slept well enough, and I’d spent all afternoon crying in my rooms, and then I’d let myself fall into a spiral of frantic thoughts—and now it was here, and it was too late to stop it. In its sudden violent wake, I was helpless, swept along by its frantic currents and the booming ache of my joints. The room of heavy upholstered furniture, glossy wood-paneled walls, and books upon books upon books reminded me of the Warden’s parlor at the priory. A sea of dark colors, each blurring into the next. Walls that grew and arched overhead like the gnarled boughs of a great forest. I longed to throw open the window and gulp down fresh air, but instead I bit my tongue hard and tried to force a sense of calm.
I moved to a stack of papers sitting on a small table across the room, hardly seeing what I was doing, not noticing the hot prickle of tears I was holding back until Talan’s gloved hand gently touched mine, steadying me. Then he tilted up my chin so I was forced to lock eyes with him, and the expression on his face was so tender, so dear and open and soft—as if he could see right down to the core of me and did not simply pity my pain but knew it—that for a moment I lost my breath.
“Gemma,” he said softly. “I’m here. I’m right here beside you. Breathe with me. In and out. I’ve got you.”
I shook my head and looked away. “Don’t you dare use your power on me, you awful man.”
“I need no empathic powers to see you trembling, or hear your breath catching, or to notice the grief on your face. I swore not to use my power to influence you or read you without your consent, and I will honor that pledge.”
“I can’t describe how much I despise having to trust the word of someone I hardly know,” I managed to say, struggling to catch my breath.
“I understand. It isn’t ideal. Let me remind you that we can end this bargain at any time.”
“Yes, and then I’d have to watch you slink off like a kicked puppy and live forever with the guilt of turning you away.”
He nodded sagely. “And the guilt of knowing you’d condemned my family’s reputation to remain forever in tatters.”
“Keep annoying me like this, and I’ll manage it quite nicely.” I waved him off, searching blearily for a chair. “I need to sit.”
“Of course.” He helped me to a worn reading chair and somehow gracefully folded his tall, beautiful body onto the tiny stool at my feet. “I’m sorry I asked about your sister. It’s just that I had to talk about something.” He smiled a little, glancing up at me through the dark curls falling over his brow. “The truth is, Lady Gemma, you make me nervous.”
I laughed out a little sobbing gasp. “Oh, for the love of all the gods…”
“It’s true. This is my first ever foray into political intrigue, you know. Ancient family feuds, secret codes, and with such an exquisite little wildcat as my partner. One hardly knows what to do with oneself in such a scenario.”
Perhaps I should have bristled at the surprising endearment, but in fact I delighted in it for one sweet, delicious moment before the reality of who I truly was returned.
“I’m no wildcat,” I said with a bitter laugh. “That’s Farrin. Or Mara, even. I’m just…” Helplessly, hating myself for falling apart in front of Talan two nights in a row, I shrugged. “I’m the runt of the litter. The pitiful limping kitten who never should have been born. Gods. Listen to me. What a pathetic, sweaty little weed.” I wrenched myself up from the chair, scrubbing my face dry. “I’m so angry right now I could scream.”
“Well, perhaps not just yet,” Talan said pleasantly from his stool. “Everyone would come storming upstairs to your rescue, and things could very quickly become awkward.”
“Stop trying to cheer me up. You don’t know what it’s like to live like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like this!” I whirled around and gestured at my body. “With this awful screaming panic living inside you that anything could set off at any moment! And sickness that comes at you like a hammer if you dare to do something as simple as visit your sister, and bone-crushing pain that knocks you about if someone possessing just the right kind of potent magic gets too close to you. And—”
I froze. Talan’s eyes widened. We’d both heard it, then: quick footsteps in the corridor.
There was no time to do anything else. My face was splotchy and swollen, my breath still evening out, my body wound tight. They would think Talan had hurt me or that we’d had an awful row that would require some ungainly explanation. Our plan would crash to pieces before it even got its feet set right on the ground.
So I did what I had to do. I rushed toward Talan, tugged hard on his arms, and once he was on his feet, I launched myself at him, hooked one of my legs over his, and kissed him.
