Part of The Kingdom of Crows
First published 2023
Zendaya has spent five hundred years confined to a small island, cut off from the rest of the world by her own mother's magic. The prison is all she has ever truly known, even as she spent centuries dreaming of something beyond it. Then the day she never believed would come actually arrives: a way out. But freedom does not come alone. It comes tangled up with a destiny she did not choose, one that ties her to a winged man, a Crow, in ways she is only beginning to understand. This novella tells the origin story of Zendaya and Cathal, the two figures whose relationship sits at the heart of the broader House of Beating Wings world. Wildenstein wrote their story for the Bookish Box 2022 Holiday Anthology, and it runs to roughly ten thousand words. Readers who have already finished House of Beating Wings will find the pieces of that story clicking into place here, in the moment where two lives first collide and a bond forms that neither of them asked for.
Genres: fantasy, novella, fantasy-romance, paranormal-romance
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, lyrical, mystical, romantic
Tropes: fated-mates, forced-proximity, magical-imprisonment, origin-story
Setting: island
56 pages · Paperback · Olivia Wildenstein