A Lullaby for the Wicked: Where Monsters Learn to Listen

She was taken to silence a monster. She stayed to save his soul.Lyra Vane hears what no one else can. The grief behind a smile. The scream trapped beneath silence. Her village calls it a curse. The kingdom calls it priceless.Kaelen Thorne, the Shadow General, carries the Noise - every death and every agony in Ouroboros, funnelled into a single mind for nineteen years. He has never known quiet. Then he rides into Oakhaven to collect a tribute, and hears nothing but her.He forgives the debt. He returns the gold.And then he takes her anyway.Forty-one singers came before Lyra. The ledgers in his mountain fortress record every name, how long each one lasted, and the single word written beside them at the end.She should be terrified of him. Instead she begins to hear the boy beneath the monster - a child cursed at eleven for a crime that was never his, hunted by a king who shares his blood.In a court where every kindness is a trap and every song can kill, Lyra must decide how much of herself she is willing to spend.Her freedom. Her heart.Her voice.A standalone adult romantic fantasy - slow burn, captive and captor, a fated unbreakable bond, a tortured morally grey hero, forced proximity, deadly court intrigue, and monsters who learn to listen.