The tea that keeps her kingdom gentle is brewed from a monster's grief. She is the one who pours it.
Alessia is the Tea Saint of Revaine: dutiful, beloved, and very good at not asking questions. Every dusk she serves the cup that softens the whole kingdom's sorrow. Every evening she pours the first cup into the roots of the great tree, the way saints have for three hundred years, and never asks what the roots want with it.
Every night, she walks the long way home, past a locked iron gate, and wants something she has no name for.
Then the dreams begin. A warmth in the dark that asks for nothing. A voice that waits instead of demanding. And when the Order finally reveals the Saint's true duty, to descend and tend the source of the tea itself, Alessia meets the truth her kingdom has been steeping in for centuries.
His name is Sorren. He is beautiful, ancient, and imprisoned beneath everything she has ever loved. His suffering is in every cup she has ever poured. He is a criminal, and he does not pretend otherwise. He is also the only one who has never lied to her.
She was raised to comfort. He was made to hunger. And every tenderness she gives him weakens the tea, which means her love is not a secret. It is sabotage, and sooner or later the kingdom will taste it.
The Soft Kingdom Below is a full-length standalone adult fantasy romance with open-door heat, a morally grey monster who keeps his word to the letter, and a hard-won HEA. For readers who like their cozy kingdoms rotten at the root and their devotion dangerous.
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