Princess Mira Quinveil Firebrand speaking. Yes, again. Try to contain your excitement.
If you somehow wandered all the way to the end of The Firefly’s Burden and then did not immediately sprint into Book Two, first of all, rude. Second, understandable. Sometimes people need a minute after being emotionally mauled by destiny, rivals, court politics, and my face.
So here is your official notice from the source herself: Cinderborn is done. That happened. We survived it. Technically.
You missed grief, fire, terrible choices, worse coping mechanisms, several emotional catastrophes, at least one man who absolutely deserved to die, and a truly offensive amount of yearning. Things got darker. Gayer. Bloodier. More politically inconvenient. Cassie got sharper. Naomi and Kess got deadlier. Rori got more Rori, which somehow made everything both better and more dangerous. And I, against my will and also somehow entirely on brand, made my life everyone’s problem.
You may now react accordingly and because the universe enjoys escalation, Book Three is no longer lurking around unnamed like some mysterious draft haunting the walls. It has a title now.
Which means, yes, we are just getting started.
This is the part where I would normally say something poetic about rising from the ashes, reclaiming power, and walking bravely into the future. Unfortunately for all of us, I know exactly what’s waiting in that future, and “poetic” feels a little dishonest when the actual list includes grief, politics, rebellion, ancient power, impossible women, and me making increasingly questionable decisions with the confidence of someone who should absolutely be supervised and is not.
So let me put this more clearly.
If The Firefly’s Burden was the spark, and Cinderborn was what happened when everything caught, then Daughters of Starveil is what comes next when the women everyone tried to control decide they are done asking permission.
Which, as you can imagine, goes extremely well for everyone involved.
It is not just my story anymore. Not really. It is Cassie’s too. And Rori’s. And Naomi’s. And Kael’s. And the women still coming. The daughters, the consorts, the sisters, the guards, the girls people underestimated right up until the moment they became too powerful to contain. So if you have been waiting for the world to get bigger, stranger, angrier, more magical, and significantly more dangerous for the men who keep making the mistake of underestimating women, congratulations. You are in luck.
Also, before anyone asks, yes, Sylvie is still somewhere nearby trying to organize our collective disaster into a readable timeline. Please be kind to her. We are difficult. Some of us are dramatic on purpose. Some of us are dramatic by birthright. I will not be clarifying which category I fall into.
So, If you started here with me at the beginning, thank you. Truly. Thank you for reading The Firefly’s Burden. Thank you for loving us early, before you knew how bad it would get. Thank you for staying long enough that I now get to stand here at the edge of Book Three and point dramatically into the fire like a deeply unstable tour guide.
And if you have not read Cinderborn yet, go fix that. Then come find us in Daughters of Starveil. We are still burning and we are nowhere near done.
P.S. Sylvie will also be circling back to The Firefly’s Burden soon to clean things up a little. By which I mean polishing, tightening, fixing the places where it is obvious this was her first time doing anything this unhinged in public, and possibly reworking a few chapters into bonus chapters where that makes more sense. So if you notice the first book quietly getting prettier and less “a sleep-deprived woman hurled her feelings at the page and hit publish,” that is not your imagination. That is growth. Be nice to her.
Book Order again:
Book 1: The Firefly's Burden
Book 2: Cinderborn
Book 3: Daughters of Starveil
