THE MIRROR OF THE DAMNED

Rowena Ashworth had never asked to be reborn. Yet when she opened her eyes inside the body of Lady Celine de Montfort—a notorious noblewoman from the Duchy of Verlaine who had just committed suicide in the most gruesome way—she found herself trapped in a vortex of intrigue far beyond mere family vendettas or throne struggles. Because Celine had not died from despair. Celine had been murdered by something that had long been buried beneath the soil of the duchy. Something that had called to her by a name even Rowena—an occult archaeologist from her previous life—had never encountered in any ancient manuscript. The de Montfort family was one of the Three Pillars of the Kingdom of Ashvold, a bloodline tied to the Twelve Holy Lines, said to be direct descendants of the Goddess Morana, the deity of death and rebirth. Yet behind the grandeur of their Eastern European-style palace and its intoxicating luxury, the family harbored a dark secret: in every generation, the first de Montfort child was always born a twin, and one of them had to die to stabilize the magical “system” that protected the entire kingdom. Rowena was the twin who was supposed to die. But it was Celine—her twin—who had perished instead, leaving Rowena trapped in the wrong body, with fragmented memories, and a blood contract etched into her skin in a language she didn’t even recognize. Standing beside her was Sir Kaelan Veyne, Celine’s personal knight-guard, famous for his strikingly handsome face and his legendary inability to read social situations. Kaelan had loved Celine in silence for ten long years. And now, inside the body of the woman he adored, Rowena had to face the fact that a knight’s blind devotion might be the only thing that could save her from the killer still lurking among the nobility. Yet love was not the end of the story. It was only the beginning of war. Because Rowena had realized something even the de Montfort family themselves did not know: Celine’s death was not merely a murder. It was a sacrifice. And that sacrifice had opened the door to the Second Layer—a dimension that had been sealed for thousands of years beneath their family altar. Down there, the forgotten gods were waiting. And they were hungry.