A Year of Small Deaths

She answered an advertisement no dying woman should have answered.

Margot Aubin has been dying since she was nineteen, and she made her peace with it long ago-until she climbs a frozen lawn and rings the bell of a house full of stopped clocks.

Adriel has been waiting in that house for four hundred years. He is one of the cold kind, a creature who starves himself to keep the last of his warmth alive, and his blood can buy her time: one dose, one more year of life. But the bargain is crueler than mercy. Every year his blood gives her is a year stolen from the long life she might have had-twelve doses, twelve years, and then nothing at all.

She takes it anyway. She has never once been afraid to die.

What neither of them bargains for is the thaw. As the doses run down and an older, colder House comes hunting the heretic who dared to keep a mortal warm, Margot and Adriel discover there may be one way out of the bargain that doesn't end in a grave-a cure that would cost him the four centuries he has hoarded against the dark, and ask her to spend her last year not being saved, but saving him.

To survive it, the monster who has never let anyone close will have to do the one thing four hundred years of cold made impossible.

He will have to let himself be held.

The cold keeps everything. That is its mercy and its cruelty. They chose the thaw.

A standalone gothic vampire romance with a series hook-the first of the Houses of Blood-Debt. Slow burn, dual POV, an immortal hero and a fearless dying heroine, a found family in a frozen house, and an ending paid for in full.

Perfect for readers who love: atmospheric gothic romance, slow-burn forbidden love, tortured immortal heroes, morally tender monsters, and stories where the cost of love is real.

For adult readers. Contains mature themes and one consensual on-page intimate scene.