Coming 2027

The Ashvane Court · Book One

Bound to the Shadow Prince

Graciela D. Sanchez

A thief. A stolen crown. A bond neither of them chose, and forty-one days before it kills them both.

Enemies-to-lovers romantasy about a half-fae thief from the bottom of the city and the exiled prince whose life is now tied to hers.

Read Chapter One free About the book
Bound to the Shadow Prince cover: an iron crown with a hollow at its brow, floating above a dark tiered city

The Book

She came for the crown.
It came for her.

She has stolen better things than a crown.

The job was simple: lift a dead dynasty's relic out of the royal reliquary, hand it to a buyer she never met, and be three districts away before anyone noticed. But the Hollow Crown was forged by the old Shadow kings to bind a ruler and a consort into one shared life. When Wren's hands close around it, it wakes.

It binds her to Severin Nightborne.

The exiled Shadow Prince is everything the Lowmarket warned her about: cold, immaculate, and utterly convinced that people are instruments. Now his heartbeat is hers. A blade in his ribs opens hers. And neither of them can walk more than a few feet apart without both of them going down in the street.

They have forty-one days until the Umbral Eclipse. If no bound party is seated on the Obsidian Throne by then, the crown finishes what it started and takes them both.

The throne is occupied by the brother who framed him for murder.

To survive, a thief who has never belonged to anyone will have to walk into the Spire on the arm of a man she'd happily watch bleed, and decide, before the dark runs out, what she's willing to become to keep him breathing.

  • Enemies to lovers
  • Fated bond
  • Forced proximity
  • Morally grey prince
  • He falls first
  • Touch her and die
  • Found-family heist crew
  • Court intrigue
  • Only one bed
FOR ADULT READERSFull-length romantasy with explicit, open-door scenes and on-page violence. Happy-for-now ending that leads into Book Two.

From Chapter One

The whole city is praying for a man to die, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Every guard in the Spire is at the Vigil. Which is why I'm on the outside of it, forty feet above the reliquary garden, hanging off a black stone ledge by three fingers and a grudge.

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Cross-section map of Duskhaven, a city built in tiers up a black cliff, from the Lowmarket at the bottom to the Spire at the top, with the Veil between them
Duskhaven, capital of Ashvane, in section.

The World

Duskhaven

Ashvane is a realm of permanent dusk, ruled from Duskhaven: a capital cut into the face of a black cliff, climbing in tiers from the Lowmarket at the foot to the Spire at the summit.

Across the middle of the cliff runs the Veil, a band of standing twilight that the Shadow fae walk through as easily as air and that no human crosses without an escort or a bought charm. It divides the city as completely as any wall. Above it, the Court. Below it, everyone else.

The Hollow Crown
A seven-pointed circlet of dark iron with an empty socket where a jewel should be and never was. Worn, it binds two people into one shared life: wound one and you wound both. It has not woken in a hundred and twelve years.
Three rules of magic
Shadow-stepping, dream-walking, and the bond. The books hold to them.

Read the series guide

The Series

The Ashvane Court

Four books, one world, a new couple in each. Wren's heist crew is the found family at the heart of the series, and the world's arc runs straight through all four.

  1. BOOK ONEBound to the Shadow PrinceWren and Severin. A thief, a stolen crown, and forty-one days.Coming 2027
  2. BOOK TWOTam OstranderA human in a realm that has never had a use for one, a Dawn Court knight on the wrong side of a border, and whatever is still moving in the Hollow Wood.Forthcoming
  3. BOOK THREESolenne MarrThe faith Sol serves is older than anyone has told her, and the cost of her healing has a limit nobody has found yet.Forthcoming
  4. BOOK FOURCorvin AsheThe reckoning with the Dawn Court. Not a battle: a negotiation, and it costs something that cannot be given back.Forthcoming

Before you start

Questions readers ask

What order do I read them in?

Publication order. Each book centres a new couple, but the world's arc runs straight through from Book One, and later books spoil earlier ones.

How spicy is it?

Open door. Explicit on the page, in a story that takes its time getting there.

Content notes

On-page violence and injury. Imprisonment and a wrongful conviction. Grief and the death of a parent, in the past. Public execution threatened. Adults only.

Does Book One stand alone?

The central couple resolves. The world does not. Book One ends happy-for-now, with a door left open on purpose.

When does it come out?

2027. Join the list below and you'll hear the date before anybody else.

About the author

Graciela D. Sanchez

Graciela D. Sanchez writes fantasy romance about people who are very bad at being saved: thieves, exiled princes, and the crews who choose each other when nobody else will. She likes her heroes morally grey, her heroines sharp-tongued, and her courts full of things nobody says out loud.

The Ashvane Court is her debut series.

Write to her at [email protected]