A delightfully wicked, fizzy debut romantasy–an enemies to lovers tale about a desperate mortal woman and a cursed fae prince.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from These Vile Hearts by Melody Robinette, which releases on August 11th 2026.
Maddox Sinclair has run out of options. No job means no health insurance —a death sentence for a type one diabetic like herself. She flees to the forest to make a desperate deal with a dryad queen: kill the Redwood King and be cured of the illness that threatens her life.
In the redwood treetops, Prince Castor, is cursed– anyone who loves him is doomed to die. Like Maddox, he has made an equally unwise pact with his brother, the Redwood King: get a mortal to fall in love with him by solstice and be free of his curse forever.
When Maddox mistakes Castor for the king, sparks fly and troubles ensue. Each must decide what is more important—survival and freedom, or the love they (kind of, almost) feel in their traitorous, vile hearts.
Darkly funny and brimming with magic, These Vile Hearts by Melody Robinette manages to be both wicked and warm, beguiling and moving—a richly woven story of survival and fate.
1
MADDOX
I sit in the open back of a neon pink moving truck, legs tucked beneath me as I flip through photo album gifted to me by my best friend and, as of today, roommate. When I get to a Polaroid of the first night in our shared apartment, I pause.
The floor is littered with boxes, open take- out containers, and cheap champagne. The green fairy lights Javen wound haphazardly up the wall cast us both in an emerald sheen that is more flattering on his deep brown skin, whereas I just look sickly. Even more sickly.
But I’d been so fucking happy that night. A rare smile brought out the dimple in my freckled cheek, my gray eyes turned to half-moons with unconcealed joy. Content and full and ready to take on life with the person who knew me best. Didn’t matter that we didn’t have parents or any stable partners. We had each other, and that was enough.
Now a painful lump swells in my throat, and my stomach churns. I swallow the emotion. There will be plenty of time to fall apart later, after Javen is well on his way to San Francisco to realize our shared dream of escaping this dying logger town. The lingering buzz of a panic attack hums just beneath my skin, waiting to take over. Not yet, though. Not just yet.
I reject the feeling. Lock it down.
My attention is drawn away from the frozen memories at the sound of a high- pitched squeal emanating from the bushes lining our apartment’s walk. A pair of vibrant blue pixies are seemingly
fighting to the death over a plump huckleberry. I used to watch them all the time when I was little, giggling at their antics. Now I merely glower. There is nothing funny or cute about the fae.
Javen shoulders his way out of the front door with three bottles of cider in hand and a family- sized bag of sweet onion chips clenched between his teeth. He breezes right by the tiny faeries, nearly crashing into one, but they disperse in a huff before able.
Even after all this time, it still feels strange that no one else can see past the fae’s glamoured veil. Once a time, I thought the Sight made me special, blessed by magical god. Now it feels like a curse. Every winged creature horned beast I stumble upon makes me see red. The same shade that pooled in the dirt as I screamed for help on Tree Trail sixteen years ago.
“Three ciders?” I Javen, closing the photo album and placing it atop a box labeled MORE COSTUME SHIT in bright green marker. “Please me you didn’t invite one of your weird coworkers
to see you off too.”
He makes a face. “Ew, of course not. One cider for me since I’ll be driving, and two for you, to help you cope with the fact that you won’t get to see my glorious face every day.”
The words are said in jest, but they’re far too painful for me to offer more than a tight-lipped smile. Cloaking misery in humor is a habit Javen and I both acquired in foster care. Succumbing to emotions in a house with people you didn’t trust was not an option, so we made light of heavy things. It made them easier to carry, along with the black trash bags of meager belongings we toted from house to broken house.
He settles beside me now, popping the top off a spiced apple cider with the edge of the pink truck. “When are you taking all your stuff over to the new place?” he asks. “You talked to the landlord, right?”
I hide the lie I’m about to tell with a deep glug from the bottle. “Tomorrow probably. Wanted to spend today wallowing.”
“Valid.”
Javen tried to convince me to move with him to San Francisco, but I told him I needed to save money. The understatement of the century, as I’m currently down to my last hundred dollars. And two days ago, I had to inform our tiny apartment complex that I won’t be able to afford the deposit on the one-bedroom I’d been planning on moving into.
Lack of money aside, I can only apply for Medicaid in Oregon as a former foster youth in this state. So I can’t go to California until I get a job that would either pay enough to cover my medical supplies or has excellent insurance. And, for some reason, none of the places I’ve applied seem particularly impressed with my measly high school education, my handful of service and hospitality jobs, or my five-month stint as virtual assistant.
As of moment, my house is none other than the Jeep I bought when I naively assumed I’d be able to afford the monthly payments with my fancy new corporate job. That’s what happens when you believe the bullshit promises of a tech company selling you a dream only to let all their remote workers go a few months later.
Javen rips into the bag of sweet onion chips, grabbing a handful before passing it to me. “Want me to get your diabetes bag? It’s in your car, yeah?”
“No need.”
My dark ginger hair is piled in a messy bun on top of my head, held in place by a black velvet scrunchie. Tucked in the bun is a capped syringe filled with insulin—a backup for when I’m not wearing pockets or don’t want to bother with the whole process of drawing insulin from a vial when I’m in the middle of doing something
like packing a moving van full of the brightest part of my life. I slide the syringe from its hiding place, remove the cap with one hand, and jab the needle into my bare thigh, emptying two units into my bloodstream to cover the carbs I’m about to devour.
Javen watches with half- lidded eyes. “You’re going to accidentally stab someone doing that shit, you know.”
“If I’m stabbing anyone, it’s not going to be an accident.”
His eyes open all the way now. “You’re a bit vile sometimes, you know.”
A bit.
Shrugging, I pluck a handful of chips from the bag, trying not tomake it too obvious that this is the first sustenance I’ve had all day. Between rationing insulin and saving money, food has become a bit of a luxury the last few weeks.
“Any luck with job applications?” he asks, trying and failing to
sound casual.
I swallow and take a long drink of cider, buying myself time to figure out an answer. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I place the bottle on a box labeled SMUT. “Not yet, but I was going to talk to Twanna about working at the bar again for a little while. I’ll save up some money and be right behind you. Then we can live out all our most chaotic dreams in the City.”
It’s a lie, but maybe it will stop him from worrying. The only local bar in Arborfell just hired a new girl after the guy who replaced me moved to Eugene to work at a bigger bar.
The problem with living in a dying logging town on the coast is there aren’t enough jobs to go around. Businesses are closing left and right, and it’s not as though we have an abundance of tourists traipsing through our little town. The second a position opens that doesn’t involve operating feller bunchers or fishing boats, it’s snatched right up like a piece of bread tossed at a flock of seagulls.
When I was younger, I used to look at twentysomethings like me and think, God, I can’t wait to be like them. Able to make my own decisions. Live where I want. Do what I want. Be free. Now? I’d give anything to go back to my sixteen-year-old self. Grounded and sent to my foster room for sneaking out again. Pissed at the people who weren’t my parents, blissfully unaware of how easy I had it with my “free” insulin and a roof over my ungrateful head.
Sucking his teeth, Javen presses the mouth bottle beneath his chin. “I could murder your fucking boss. swear to all the gods.”
“Same.” If it meant I could afford a food, insulin, and all the other supplies it takes to manage disease, I would sincerely consider it. The worst part about that corporate job was that it
gave me a taste of what life be like if the Fates had been kinder. New car, clothing, and spending money, and I got to see how easy life with type 1 diabetes can be if you have enough money to manage it.
Cordless pumps and continuous glucose monitors. The ease of being to dose for food without injections, to check my blood sugar on an app rather than prick my finger and feed it into a test strip. Those few months made me feel like I could actually breathe again. Gave me that sense of control I’ve desperately searched for ever since I was a child. But all of it was snatched away
with a single email.
All I can afford now are vials of insulin and syringes, and even those have me pinching pennies and skipping meals. And ever since I got a taste of what life could’ve been like, I swear the needles sting more going in.
Javen sighs, tossing another chip into his mouth and pulling out his phone to scroll social media, pausing on a muted video of a man gesturing wildly at the sky. In the subtitles, I spot UAPs and ORBS.
Without looking up Javen says, “Well, you know, if looking for a job here doesn’t pan out, you could always make a deal with a dryad.” I roll my eyes at him, though he doesn’t see. “Fuck off.”
Dryads have been a part of Arborfell’s local lore for decades, perhaps even centuries. Like Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, or Loch Ness Monster. The rumors were probably started by someone else who had the Sight, warning everyone about the forest creatures with antlers and blades made of wood. Even Javen, someone who listens to hours of podcasts about the existence of aliens, never seen dryads as anything more than another silly cryptid fable.
When I first met him as a terrified ten- old in a cramped social worker’s office, I wouldn’t shut up the fae creatures who’d killed my parents. No one believed me. They pitied me, of course, but dismissed my ramblings fairy tale my brain created to shield me from the trauma watching my parents’ slaughter.
The police questioned several times, trying to get a composite sketch of what they was a human killer on the loose. I was adamant about I saw, describing the dryads in detail, down to the gray- green shade of lichen on their antlers, the rough bark of their horns. Eventually, the investigators gave up on me, recommending receive intensive therapy.
And when Javen and I were placed in the same foster home years later, he asked, “So, who really killed your parents? I know you don’t believe it was dryads.”
I couldn’t blame him. It’s not easy believing in something you can’t see with your own eyes—though I’m fairly certain he’s never actually seen a UAP or extraterrestrial before. It didn’t take me long to change my story from My parents were killed by dryads to I don’t remember. Must’ve blocked it out.
To this day I still haven’t shown Javen the journal I scooped up from beside my dad’s stiffening body. I haven’t dared ask him to help decipher the pages and pages of cryptic notes my father transcribed about dryads and other fae.
Don’t drink the wine.
Mortal music enchants them.
Ironfae presence increasing in Sylveris. Deforestation?
Expansion?
Teach Mads self- defense. Axe? Knife? Gun?
No. Those scribbled secrets stay with me alone, locked away with the rest of the shit I keep in that haunted attic mine.
I bring the cider to my lips, gulping until gone before tossing it into our open recycling bin.
Javen opens another bottle, perhaps sensing my smothered exasperation. “Drink up, buttercup. going to work out. You’ll be in San Francisco before you it.”
Forcing a false smile, Yep.”
He flashes me a toothy grin. My heart twists as I realize this may be the last time I see it, at least for a while. I know he’s just moving and dying, but something about this feels like a death. The cleaning of our shared apartment. All his colorful swaths of fabric and half-complete costume projects, his fairy lights and oversized plants that took up space in every window. Bright rugs and glitter bomb shoes all packed away in this ugly pink moving truck. Leaving behind a greige shell of a sad apartment I can’t even afford.
Pressing a kiss to the top of my head, Javen hops up and declares that he has to pee before hitting the road. My stomach grows heavy with dread.
No, I want to say. Please don’t leave me. Not yet. I can’t do this alone.
“I’ll watch the truck,make sure no one steals Tabitha.” I pat the black wig of a mannequin he bought from the owner of a retro clothing store that shut down early last year.
“Guard her with your life.” He makes to climb from the truck and pauses, reaching behind one of the boxes and unearthing my old ukelele. “Wait, don’t you want this?”
Shoulders shrugging up to my ears, I say, “I don’t play it much anymore. Plus, it will give you something to remember me by.”
My mom was the one who taught me music. It was the only thing we really bonded over. She was a skilled pianist and gave me lessons when I was old enough to plink out the tune to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Before she was killed, she promised to teach me guitar after I got the hang of the ukelele first. The last song I ever learned from her was “Nature Boy” by Nat King Cole.
Javen places the instrument back in my arms. “Absolutely not. I have a million pictures to remember you by.” He does a twisting jump off the truck, pointing at me. “And quit acting like we’ll never see each other again. I will simply not allow it, Maddox Marie.”
The reminder of another Javenism—dubbing everyone’s middle name Marie—brings a lump to my throat.
“Go pee, Javen Marie.”
He jogs back into the apartment, leaving me alone again. Pulling out my phone, I check for any missed calls and nearly choke when I see there’s a voicemail with a number that matches the one I’ve dialed every day for the past month. With shaking hands, I tap the button and hold my phone up to my ear.
Excerpted from These Vile Hearts by Melody Robinette. Copyright © 2026 by Melody Robinette. Excerpted by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
