Lisane: My whole life, I had been a creature used to candlelight. But I wasn’t accustomed to my own breath hot against my face, or the rough feeling of fabric against my cheek—or knowing that my wrists were tied behind my back, painfully tight. The last thing I could recall was being in a carriage…We’d been running away from the Deathless . . . And now I was here. Wherever here was. Tied up, in the dark, on the ground, with a bag around my head. The very thing my father had been afraid of for me for my whole life—and the reason I lived in a gilded cage, only getting to leave the palace when I had throne-sworn mages by my side—had apparently happened. I had been kidnapped. Rhaim: Every mage gets one clear vision on the eve of their Ascension into their full powers, right before they get the brand of their mage-mark: you see the thing that will cause your absolute demise. Some men see snowy peaks or waterfalls, others bucking horses, and some lucky few see themselves with old and wrinkled hands, passing peacefully in their sleep. In all instances, we’re told, the reasoning behind the visions is the same: if you’re strong enough to be trusted with powers, then you must learn to accept the hand of fate, as surely as you’d earned it as your mage-mark. You need to know, deep in your bones and now scarred on your skin, that while there are things in the world you can change with your powers, death comes for us all. There is no amount of magic that can escape it. And so, when a group of soldiers brought a bound and drugged woman to my doorstep, to bribe me to fight in their war, and pulled the bag off of her head and I saw her there—the woman from the vision at my Ascension, and who has haunted my dreams ever since—I knew it was the beginning of my end. She had no idea who I was, or what we were to each other. She knew nothing about my fate or future with her, or how she was destined to kill me. Which meant in the present . . . she was mine, to do with as I pleased. And I wanted to see her crawl. From the author of the Dark Ink Tattoo series and the co-author of Prince of the Other Worlds, comes Bend Her, dark fantasy romance akin to Kushiel's Dart, about Rhaim the All-Beast, a cruel mage doomed to die at the hands of the woman he must protect at all costs, and Lisane, the sheltered Princess of Tears, who has been given into his care and who needs him to teach her magic so she can be free—no matter how much it might hurt her.

I wanted her. She was just two floors away from me here in my castle. And some piece of her—naïve and inexperienced—wanted me. The man who was doomed to die at her hand. I could mostly ignore that fact, now that I was used to her presence, and my intermittent lust. But I wondered if not telling her about it was a bigger betrayal than not telling her about my arrangement with her father. If she did manage her Ascension—and when she found out what that meant—then she would know the truth. That there hadn’t been a moment, ever since we met, that I didn’t see my death inside her eyes. I could only hope that the shame of her learning that would be absolved by a second realization: that I had loved her anyway. Break Her: A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance novel is the second book in the Transformation Trilogy, about Rhaim the All-Beast, a cruel beast mage doomed to die at the hands of the woman he must protect at all costs, and Lisane, the sheltered Princess of Tears, who has been given into his care and who needs him to teach her magic so she can be free—no matter how much it might hurt her.

The final book in the Transformation Trilogy, an intense fantasy romance retelling of Beauty and the Beast: Rhaim produced a key from somewhere upon his person. “The collar has a lock.” He tossed it out onto the table. “If I cannot solve the Deathless, I will become your loyal servant, until the end of my time.” I was suddenly in danger of fainting. Rhaim had just as much as admitted he didn’t have an answer yet, and the price he would pay for failure was too great for me to bear. I knew what it was like to be trapped in a cage. I would never, ever, send anybody else—much less the man I loved—into one. “Father, you cannot agree to his terms,” I told him. I rose up on my tiptoes, leaning over Helkin’s shoulder to shout, “I still hate you, beast!” willing Rhaim to change his mind. Rhaim gave me a wicked smile, and spoke in the growl that bypassed my ears and went straight to my core. “As well you should, princess. And know, too, that if I am given you, I will never show you kindness again . . . and the things I will do to you will make the unicorns weep.” Bend Her: A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance is the story of Rhaim the All-Beast, a cruel beast mage doomed to die at the hands of the woman he must protect at all costs, and Lisane, the sheltered Princess of Tears, who has been given into his care and who needs him to teach her magic so she can be free—no matter how much it might hurt her.