The IlumaraTrilogy
The last gods are fading.
There is no door in a grief that is loved.From The Byrds of Aberone
Meet the trilogyThree books, one first star.
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Book One
Complete manuscriptThe Byrds of Aberone
Cora Byrd has spent eighteen years hiding the wind that follows her. In Wrenmoor, a village nestled within nine great trees, no one has seen magic used in over twenty years, and the Byrds are remembered only as a bloodline the kingdom banished and chose to forget. When the wind answers her in front of the whole village, Cora goes to Aberone, where the university has already refused her three times.
What waits for her there is a tavern, a silent man who quietly clears up after every small impossible thing the wind does, an old mage thought mad by the council, and a road north to the last gods of Vaelmere, whom the world believes are extinct.
It is a story about grief: what it becomes when it is refused, and what it becomes when it is held.
- About 80,000 words
- Adult fantasy, older YA crossover
- Slow-burn romance
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Book Two
In progressThe Ignisrapt’s Song
Ignisrapt is the old song of fire and air. At the end of Book One it is sung, and the people who woke it feel a single clear note stir beneath their ribs. In Book Two, the song they have woken is paid for.
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Book Three
In progressThe Return of the Lumenwane
The trilogy closes with the return of the last gods of Vaelmere.
The Lumenwane
Small as children, bright as starlight, and almost gone.
They were the last gods of Vaelmere. The Lumenwane gave their power away to build the world until almost nothing of them remained, and now any one of them can fade between one breath and the next. They answer it by treating every day as a celebration, and they hold their grief as gratitude, so that nothing in them can be turned.
Hidden behind a veil of ice, they stand between the world and the Umbra, a hunger born of the darkness that followed their making. It feeds on grief, and it wants, more than anything, to be filled.
The world believes the Lumenwane are extinct. One girl, who has spent her life hiding the wind, is about to find them.
Characters
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Wind
Cora Byrd
Eighteen years of hiding the wind that follows her. Silver-ringed eyes, hair black as ink, and a village that is grateful and afraid.
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Fire
Feran Bearinger
Fire-born heir to a great House and the throne. His power flares without warning whenever Cora is near.
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The Phoenix Tavern
Baeron Barwolf
Silent, watchful, and quietly clearing up after every small impossible thing the wind does.
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Fire
Kael Dray
Feran’s closest friend, and one of the Chosen Eight sent north to the Frostmarch.
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The East Tower
Lidonas
The old mage of the East Tower, thought mad by the council, who chose Cora without their agreement.
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Exiled Byrd
Mireva
A cloaked woman with a raven on her shoulder and Cora’s own silver-ringed eyes. She says the wind remembers even when people do not.
Words
“Sometimes the greatest losses bleed the greatest lesson. To fail is to learn, and to learn is to grow. There is strength in that, if you sit with it long enough.”
The Prologue
Once, before Vaelmere learned to count its own scars, magic did not ask permission.
It moved the way dreams move, unhurried, pooling in the hollows of the land like a resplendent light left over from some ancient, more generous Sun. The wind did not merely blow. It unravelled, trailing long spools of memory behind it, so that to stand in an open field on the right evening was to feel someone else’s grief brush your cheek, someone else’s laughter tangle in your hair, and never know whose. Fire did not simply burn. It breathed.
