One week of freedom. One cursed druid. One woman who could break the spell or doom them both.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from C.J. Burright’s Druid Cursed, which releases on October 7th 2025.
Every fifty years, Kellen Ravenwood escapes his magical prison for seven days. This Samhain is his last chance to break the curse, or he’ll be bound forever. All he needs is a sacrifice: the blood of Maggie O’Malley, the last living descendant of the witch who cursed him.
Maggie, desperate for cash after a brutal divorce, jumps at the chance to win a $500,000 prize at a mysterious Irish estate. She never expected ancient rituals, strange magic, or Kellen, the dangerously charming man who claims she’s the key to his freedom.
But Maggie won’t be anyone’s sacrifice. And if there’s another way to break the curse, she’ll find it.
Because some destinies are meant to be rewritten.
And some love stories are worth defying fate for.
AWAKENING
Kellen Ravenwood opened his eyes to the gentle bloom of dawn, not the aching, glaring emptiness that had surrounded him for the last fifty years. Birdsong and the whispering of leaves in the wind filled what had been utter silence a mere heartbeat before. He drew in a deep breath of air scented with herbs, moisture, and loam. The unholy urge to weep nearly overcame him.
Home. At last, he was home again.
Caedmon, his twin in appearance if not personality, loomed over him while he sorted his senses. The slab of stone beneath him lost its warmth. Silver whorls embellished the surface, fading, remnants of the counter-spell Caedmon had used to free Kellen from his cursed prison.
A fleeting freedom, a final opportunity to make it permanent.
“Welcome back, Kel.” Caedmon flashed a smile, his black eyes glittering with unshed tears. “For being nearly six centuries old, you still look quite dashing.”
“And after nigh six centuries, you remain overly annoying, brother.” Kellen winced at the gravel of his rusty voice. He pushed himself up to a sit, uncaring that he was naked, his skin pebbling in Ireland’s late October chill. Sensation of any kind was glorious after the absolute void of his enchanted prison.
Caedmon handed him a flask, and Kellen sipped the fresh, cool water slowly, adjusting to the reality of being human once again. Free. Alive.
But only for the length of seven days, the barest relief. And this would be his last bout of freedom, ever, if the curse was not broken.
He pushed aside the yawning chasm within him that threatened to destroy his few remnants of hope. No matter the number of days, he would use them wisely. He would not wallow in defeat before it was done.
Kellen brushed off the dust, cobwebs, and failure of another half century gone by and grasped the robe offered by his twin. Their enemy believed a week of freedom was inadequate time to break her curse. Thus far, it had proven true, but he refused to allow her to steal his faith along with his freedom.
This time. He could not fail again. By the stars above and the earth below, no curse, no lie, no witch would rob him of his liberty. And woe to any fool who dared stand in his way.
He looked to his twin, who had just spent another fifty years searching for a remedy while Kellen remained trapped, unable to assist him. “Pray tell me you have favorable tidings.”
“I’ve found the key to breaking this curse,” Caedmon said with a nod. Before Kellen’s hope could soar, his brother’s smile bled from his face. “But you aren’t going to like what you must do.”
CHAPTER ONE
Maggie O’Malley—formerly Maggie Jamison, thanks to a judge’s final signature—released the handle of her rolling suitcase and gulped an icy breath of autumn Ireland air. She shuddered and pulled her jacket tighter as she took in the ominous Ravenwood Estate ahead of her and Wendy.
The butt-numbing flight over the Atlantic and teeth-rattling taxi ride through gloomy, rain-swept mountains and misty forests should have prepared her for this, but the sour sense of unease sank even deeper. A twelve-foot wrought-iron gate blocked the way to the mansion and its Gothic gables peeking beyond the thick forest border. And not your average I’m-rich-and-you’re-not type of gate with curling vines and flowers. This one felt more like a warning, with spokes forming two fanged gargoyles, barbed wings spread wide. Totally went with the dark, enchanted woods vibe.
Even the air felt wrong. Heavy, like some unseen force pressed down on her.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked Wendy, her best friend and plus-one for the week ahead. Not that they had any quick getaway now. The cab had peeled out before she could even fully shut the door. And according to her cell phone, there was no service this far north. “It doesn’t exactly say, ‘Your lucky streak starts here.’”
“Relax, Mags.” Of course Wendy wasn’t put off by the creepy environment here. Horror was her happy place. She waved the glossy red-and-black invitation above her head as she moved toward the gate without looking back. “You’re going to win the cash grand prize, and you’re going to have so much fun doing it, every scumbag stunt your ex-husband pulled will be erased from your memory.”
Well, putting it that way made it hard to argue. Maggie resumed her reluctant trudge. Competitions disguised as week-long Halloween parties weren’t her usual M.O., but desperation made a mild-mannered woman regrettably reckless. And it beat sitting home alone, feeling like a complete failure. Divorce did that, even though she hadn’t been the one screwing a case witness, stealing from the joint bank account, or lying at every opportunity.
Her stomach cramped, the betrayal still a festering wound that wouldn’t quite heal. Apparently, judges believed cops over domestic engineers, no matter the circumstances.
Love, trust, and honor. What a joke.
She took a deep breath and waited for her heart to shake off the memories. This week, she’d do whatever it took to win the reward up for grabs—more than enough cash to get her house out of foreclosure, pay off her ex-husband’s interest, and fund her dream to open a shop.
Books, Brews, and Bygones—great reads, great coffee, and great curiosities. Selling all her favorites in one cute, convenient boutique was a goal she’d given up when she’d met Darren, who’d preferred that she stay at home and not work at all. He’d blamed it on his old-fashioned sensibilities, and she’d been too love-struck and loyal to recognize it for what it truly was. Control.
She’d never be that naive again.
At the gate, Wendy tapped a button on the video intercom with a glittery pink fingernail and brought her eye close to the security camera. “Helllloooo. Anyone in there?”
The lock clicked, and the gate creaked open, a horror-movie introduction come to life.
“Welcome to Ravenwood Estate.” Wendy twirled and sashayed on through. “Home to the mysterious, sexy—and might I add rich—bachelor, Caedmon Ravenwood. Rumor says he’s attending the celebration in person this year.” Her voice had taken on a sing-song tone.
“Great.” A sexy bachelor was the least of her concerns, rich or not. That was more Wendy’s style. Maggie was here for only one thing: the reward.
Wendy, the conniving witch, had entered Maggie’s name in the Magic, Moonlight, and Mayhem contest, a challenge for anyone of Irish descent to answer. Despite her auburn hair, Wendy wasn’t a lick of Irish—but she could accompany as a plus-one. Maggie hadn’t been upset with her, though. Wendy was only trying to help, and the chances of being selected were slim to none. But then, by some odd twist of fate, Maggie had actually been chosen to participate, so now, here they were at this place that was all things grim and Gothic. The competition details remained a bit sketchy, but with Halloween on the horizon, she had her suspicions that the agenda included more than mundane activities like modeling the latest cowl fashion or carving the fanciest staff.
Supernatural shenanigans so weren’t her thing. It wasn’t that she feared the unknown. Thanks to her Aunt Maeve, she knew too much about those things and preferred to avoid them.
The gate seemed to swallow Wendy as she passed through, and Maggie swore the shadows darkened around her friend.
Maybe her imagination was just going wild, but a chill scampered down Maggie’s spine. She stopped on the opposite side, refusing to enter. “It’s not too late for a flight back for margaritas and popcorn at home. Cat pajamas, The Princess Bride, what could be better? We can brainstorm other ways to raise money.”
Wendy spun so fast her hair pirouetted around her head. Her eyes glittered with green fire. “Get your ass over here right now.”
“But you know how I feel about anything…arcane.”
She sighed, her eyes softening. “You’re perfectly safe here. It’s all just innocent Halloween fun,” Wendy assured her. “And besides, do you have a better alternative to make some fast cash so you won’t be living in your car next week, Mags?”
“Rob a bank?”
Wendy laughed. “You’ve got this amazing Ireland vacation ahead of you and moolah to win. You’re not backing out even if it kills you.”
Kill. So not the word she’d choose. Maggie opened her mouth for persuasion attempt number two.
“Don’t.” Wendy planted a fist on her hip and tapped her red stilettos. “Even if you don’t make enough money to get your house back and open your boutique—which you will—this is an all-expense-paid, week-long trip to the luxury estate of the Emerald Isle’s most eligible bachelor. You need this. And I need this, but more importantly, you need this,” she repeated. “Three years of Darren dragging his feet through the divorce just to torture you is pure evil. We’re both going to flush his memory down the loo this week, a permanent break from the past and a fresh future ahead. Got it?”
Maggie grinned. Best BFF ever. “Don’t get all witchy on me. Sheesh. I’m coming.”
Wendy stopped her at the threshold and held out a hand. “Pinkie-swear we’ll never let a man affect our friendship, no matter how rich or badass or sexy he may be.”
“Never.” She hooked their pinkies together. “I’ll earn my own riches, fight my own battles, and won’t give any man with six-pack abs a second look.”
“What about bedroom eyes and a striptease smile?” Wendy arched a brow.
“Gross.”
“Suit and tie?”
“Posers.”
“Sword and shield?”
Maggie chewed on her lip. Tough one, considering she loved all things medieval. “Depends on the sword.”
“Nerd.”
“Diva.” Maggie hugged her. “You’re right. We both need this.”
“Yes, yes, we do. And just to be clear, I’m not saying we can’t have a good time with men, as long as they don’t come between us.”
“Right. Well…you can have all the good times with men for both of us on this trip.”
Wendy laughed and looped their arms, then pulled her through the gate.
A sudden gust of wind raked across Maggie’s face and ripped at her hair with icy claws. As she pushed the strands from her eyes, the wind swept and swirled a pile of dead leaves and scattered them in the air near Wendy. For a second, the foliage seemed choreographed by an invisible artist twisting them into a foreign shape. Crackling and spinning, the leaves crowded around Wendy’s ankles. They rose from the ground like a living thing while she squeezed her eyes shut, her face turned away.
The gate shut behind them with a clang, and Maggie jumped, the vibrations echoing in her bones. When she turned back, the wind had abandoned the leaves and left them in a shredded, lifeless circle at Wendy’s feet.
“Damn, they weren’t kidding about the unpredictable weather out here,” Wendy grumbled, straightening her fitted wool coat. “Do I have any leaves stuck in my hair?”
Maggie exhaled, long and slow, expelling the creepy vibes with her breath. “No, you’re good,” she answered. They were just leaves. She was going to enjoy herself this week, and she was going to win that money, come hell or Halloween.
…
Kellen Ravenwood tugged his tie and pinned his twin with a black plague glare. “Why must I don this infernal attire? Have I not endured enough torment in my overlong lifetime?”
“You can handle a tuxedo. Be happy I gave you boxers, not briefs.” Caedmon clapped him on the shoulder, and his raven eyes twinkled. He was clearly enjoying himself, the vermin. “Time to step into the modern age, Kel. Druids don’t wear hooded capes twenty-four-seven anymore, only optionally at rituals.”
“A shame.”
“In your case, maybe.” Caedmon tapped the leather thong holding Kellen’s shoulder-length hair back at his nape. “You need a haircut.”
He bared his teeth. “Death first.”
“Half a century older and just as touchy.”
“For valid reasons.” He scarcely needed the reminder. Cursed to exist in an enchanted box, his sole respite one week at Samhain once every fifty years, thanks to Caedmon—the respite, not the curse. His brother’s counter-spell had insurmountable limits. Seven individual escapes for seven sequential days. This was the seventh and final escape.
These next seven days would be his last bout of freedom if the curse could not be broken. Caedmon had claimed to have discovered the key but refused to reveal it until Kellen had dressed, which introduced a whole other complication. He attempted to fasten the tie once again.
“This is it. We won’t fail this time.” Facing him, Caedmon rested his hands on Kellen’s shoulders, then seized control of the tie, finishing it easily. With the exception of the neat goatee Kellen refused to shave and Caedmon’s shorter hairstyle, Caedmon was his black-eyed, black-haired mirror reflection. “After this week, you’ll be free. Forever.”
Free. Forever.
The words taunted him, too sweet to believe.
Kellen turned to the window overlooking the gardens beyond, where fading sunlight frosted the trees into a shimmering wonderland. He could no longer remember how it felt to lift his face to the sun whenever he wished and bask in its warm caress. To stroll beneath the fragrant boughs of fir, his steps silenced by moss and pine needles, absent from the heavy burden of finite seconds. True freedom was a dream he dared not hope for, and yet it remained his sole savior while despair wormed ever closer, year after year, patiently awaiting his surrender. If he returned to his prison again, this week would be his last taste of what it felt like to live.
“Here. Drink this.” Caedmon handed him a silver flask. “Lighten up.”
Instead of growling, he took a swig. The liquid burned a fiery trail down his throat to his gullet. He savored the sensation, starved for the simple human luxuries of heat and taste.
His brother swiped the flask from him, set it down on a side table, and said to the air, “Lights, dim.” The lamps immediately dimmed, obeying his command.
“What— How—”
“Lights, off.” The room fell into darkness. “Lights, on.” The lamps burned anew. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, brother. Just say what you need. You and I have the same voice, so everything should work for you. Except the sage sconces in the corridors, of course. Those are real flames you’d have to snuff out manually.”
Kellen resisted a sigh of annoyance at his brother’s smirk. Modern technology. The last time he’d awakened had been in the 1970s when Caedmon’s hair had been at a more agreeable length, and he’d carried a device the size of a brick that could magically convey conversations from afar with the living, not the dead. Before that, ’twas the 1920s, a simpler era but still advanced to him. In the last century, technology seemed to have increased at a rapid rate that he could not possibly keep abreast of. And wasting efforts to learn it all in a mere seven days was a fool’s errand.
Caedmon’s smirk faded, then, shifting into an intensity that made Kellen’s pulse quicken. “As I said before, I finally figured it out, the missing ingredient to breaking the curse for good.”
Kellen held his breath, hardly daring to hope. While he could do naught to interfere with the curse lest he be dragged back to prison immediately, the counter-spell destroyed, his brother had no such limits. Caedmon had spent centuries searching for a method to end his sentence.
“You also said I would not like what I must do. What is it?”
“Sorcha’s last living descendant…”
The liquor in his belly boiled. Sorcha, the witch who’d cursed him all those centuries ago. “She is the key? How?”
“Her blood,” Caedmon said. “We have to sacrifice her.”
He was in his brother’s face before he even thought to move. “Another must die so that I might live? Nay, I cannot—”
“You can, and you will. The world will be better off with all traces of that wicked witch finally erased. The trade could be a lot worse, and you know it. We’ve tried everything else, and my research has led me to this. It’s the only way. Our last hope.” He gripped Kellen’s shoulders. “It will work, trust me.”
He did trust his brother. He had no other choice. “You were correct. I like it not.”
“You don’t like being imprisoned, either.”
Kellen scowled and turned away. He could not argue with such logic.
“This is your final chance, Kel.” His voice lowered. “Everyone must make sacrifices in life. You’re no exception. So ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice for your freedom?”
Anything. Everything. But this… He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fie.”
Caedmon grinned. “Good choice. I carefully hand-selected the competitors from the guests in attendance this week. With any luck, each one possesses enough energy power-up to give us the final, extra flood of magic I’ll need to break the curse on Samhain night. Their required participation in rituals will ensure it. More importantly, Sorcha’s last-known relative will be here as the selected wildcard entrant. I made the reward cash impossible to resist, more than any previous year.”
Kellen cared not about the money lost. Other matters were far more important.
Every year at Samhain, when the veil between worlds thinned, Sorcha strove to sabotage the three Ravenwood wards and make his prison permanent. Thus far, Caedmon had thwarted her while relentlessly hunting for a remedy, but he’d never found one.
Until now.
His brother’s timely victory felt too much like trickery. That some element had altered enough to reveal the cure and allow Caedmon to find Sorcha’s kin on precisely the same year as his final respite could be no coincidence. The immortal harridan would be near, watching, waiting to strike.
“Sorcha’s descendant,” he said, “what is her name?”
“Maggie O’Malley.” Caedmon tucked the flask into his breast pocket. “New moon’s on Samhain. All we have to do is keep her here until then.”
“Aye. And then sacrifice her.” It gave him no pleasure to kill someone, let alone a woman, but she was Sorcha’s descendant. While not all witches were evil, she was most likely akin to her ancestor and determined to only harm.
“Sugar-coating, Kel. You should try it sometime.” Caedmon winked and headed for the exit. “Guests will arrive at the welcome dinner soon. Relax and enjoy yourself tonight. Sorcha has never shown until Samhain evening, so put on your party face. Practice your smile, and I don’t mean the sinister one.”
His brother left, and the bedroom door clicked shut behind him, leaving a silence reminiscent of his usual tomb. Kellen blew out a breath and closed his eyes. Seven days until the new moon’s surplus power. Seven days to prevent Sorcha’s schemes.
Seven days to either true freedom or eternal imprisonment.
As much as he wished for his twin’s certainty, Sorcha was too powerful an enemy to dismiss so easily. He would be a fool to relax, as Caedmon suggested, and yet spending his meager freedom twisted in uneasiness created a different manner of prison.
The back of his neck prickled with awareness, and he opened his eyes. Beyond the window, at the edge of the boundary wards, leaves the color of gold, earth, and fire spun, brought to life by a northern wind. Twilight glittered in the colors as they writhed in lovely formation, rising from the ground like clay beneath a potter’s hand. Slowly, the leaves took shape—of a woman. Cold crept through Kellen’s veins as the leaves settled into Sorcha’s familiar features.
“Beware, druid…” Her raspy voice slithered through walls and windows, no more than a whisper from an unseen crypt.
The wards around the estate should impede her from reaching him, but he could not prevent tightening his fists, every part of him preparing to fight.
“My victory is nigh, the jaws of my trap already sprung. There is no escape.”
The foliage churned away on the wind, taking her form with it.
Kellen slowly unclenched his fists. Caedmon’s statement that Sorcha never showed before Samhain had been true—until now. Announcing her presence early, splurging her power with harmless parlor tricks that could slip past their wards, hinted that she knew full well who had entered Ravenwood halls, how close they were to shattering her curse. ’Twas a bold move, tipping her hand, a demonstration of utter confidence.
As if she had already sealed her triumph.
He’d have to maintain careful watch over Sorcha’s descendant, once he met her, whilst avoiding whatever snares the witch plotted. For, wards or not, she would do everything in her power to destroy their plans and drag him back to his prison. Forever.
Cacamas. He would find little peace or rest in these next seven days of freedom.
Copyright © 2025 by C.J. Burright. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
