Luca Serrano has nothing left to sell — except himself.

When his family's debts swallow everything but a cracked mirror and a borrowed shirt, the masked carnival of Serenova offers one final transaction: a willing companion, sent into the labyrinth beneath the city, to serve the creature who lives there. One month underground. In return, every debt forgiven.

The creature's name is Asterion.

He is eight hundred years old. He has horns that curve like question marks. He bakes bread at dawn, argues about Herodotus at dinner, and paints in colours that glow in the dark. He is cultured, gentle, devastatingly intelligent — and he has been collecting humans for centuries. Not to consume. To keep.

Luca has spent his whole life performing — charm as currency, beauty as leverage, every touch a transaction. But Asterion doesn't want a performance. He wants Luca to be real. And the labyrinth, with its shifting corridors and blue-green light and a door that opens from one side only, is the first place Luca has ever been seen.

The problem is: the last companion went mad. The one before that stayed forty-three years and died in Asterion's arms. And the locked room at the end of the corridor holds the belongings of everyone who came before — curated, maintained, kept.

Luca is falling in love with his jailer. His jailer is falling in love with the one person he might have to let go.

The cage is gilded. The door has a key. The question is not whether Luca can leave — it's whether leaving would break them both.

GILDED CAGE is a literary MM monster romance about the difference between being kept and being held. Full of heat, heartbreak, and a Minotaur who makes very good bread.

Content note: This book contains explicit sexual content between consenting adults, themes of captivity and power dynamics, and a Minotaur who will ruin you for human men. Intended for readers 18+.

Tropes readers love: Monster romance • Captive romance • Touch him and die • Only one bed (it's his) • Grumpy/sunshine • Found family • Who did this to you • Size difference • He falls first • Forced proximity • Slow burn to inferno