Ep.1 🖤 | Special Edition Giveaway & Jak & Marius Story Announcement

Beauty of Infinite Ruin is coming...

Hello, friends! Welcome to 🖤The Coven🖤

I am sorry it has been YEARS since my last Newsletter, but it is so nice to reach out again and give you some updates. And of course, to say I am sorry, I will be hosting a draw to give away a Rainbow Crate edition of Lord of Eternal Night. All you need to do to enter is be subscribed to my newsletter until September 15th - I will then pick a winner, so just stick around and you may just win!

Don’t forget to join the Rainbow Crate mailing list here for news about re-sales, future editions and news … *shhh something is happening so you really should join*

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I recently signed a three book deal with Second Sky Books and published my Merlin x Fourth Wing MM Fantasy Romance. It has been a whirlwind of a month, and I am so happy you have all been enjoying so far. If you haven’t got it yet, and would to read Heir to Thorn and Flame..

Read Here

🖤How beautiful are the covers for book one and two?🖤

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In other news, I am also working with Faecrate on editions for my Darkmourn Series and we recently revealed all the covers. Last time I checked, there is still boxes left. Run, don’t walk, before they all go!

🖤 ALL-NEW and EXCLUSIVE full color dust jackets with foiling accents for all books by @sam.spectre
🖤 Gorgeous exclusive foiling details on the hardcovers for all books designed by @forensicsandflowers
🖤 Stunning page edge details
🖤 Signed tip-in pages

Faecrate Editons Here

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🖤 Beauty of Infinite Ruin - Darkmourn 1.5 Announcement - Release 2024 🖤

Now, for what you may have been waiting for. What happened after the events of Lord of Eternal Night but before King of Immortal Tithe? - Find out in 2024 when I release Jak & Marius’s extra novella Darkmourn 1.5 (SPOILER WARNING please note do not read below if you have not read Lord of Eternal Night)

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Beauty of Infinite Ruin

Sneak Peak Darkmourn 1.5

1 — Jak

Marius stared down at me with crimson eyes burning with intense lust. He was a starved man, utterly ravenous. His mouth and chin were smeared with blood, my blood. And he desired more.

The wounds on my thighs had already healed. The tickling itch of skin as it stitched together was as intoxicating as the feeling of his teeth slipping into my flesh. 

Marius smiled down at me; a grin so predatory it tore my power away.

‘Divine,’ he whispered.

‘Then why have you stopped?’ I asked, heat spooling in a trail where his pointed nail traced up my inner thigh. 

‘I simply wish to take my time, Jak.’ 

Gods, the way he said my name ⎯ if I was not already dead, it would have been my undoing. ‘You have an eternity to enjoy me, Marius.’

‘It would not be enough,’ he replied, crawling over me.

I bit down on my lower lip, the two sharp canines piercing dewy flesh until the sweet nectar of gore filled my cheeks. As I smiled at him, flashing blood covered teeth, Marius’s eyes hazed with a cloud of pleasure. His tongue broke free of his mouth, and he dove upon me, erasing the blood with one swipe. 

‘My Jak,’ he growled, ‘how I love you.’

My power exploded from me and with it, every flame in the room lengthened into towering pillars of heat. I marvelled at the golden firelight as it danced across the iridescent sheen of Marius’s skin. He was haloed in it, although the warmth never seemed to reach us, despite our room being filled with candles. Hundreds of them covered every surface, even extending across the floor in a sea of wax and flame. 

It had been a year since Marius had turned me ⎯ a year since my mother killed me, a year since his kiss of death brought me back to him. I only knew how much time had passed because we watched the seasons change together from this bedroom. Winter melted to spring; summer burned away to autumn. Time had shifted in the blink of an eye. It was no longer a concept that mattered when you were immortal. Except, to me, it mattered. As did the lack of heat from the surrounding candles. I longed to feel it ⎯ which was why Marius had filled our room with light, leaving nothing but a path to the closed door. 

He didn’t have to tell me his reasonings ⎯ it was an unspoken thing between us. He understood me, I understood him. 

With speed akin to our curse, I flipped Marius onto his back with little effort. The oaken frame of the bed groaned beneath the force, singing alongside his surprised moan. 

‘My turn,’ I whispered, spreading my palms across the hard curves of Marius’s chest. A hiss caught in his throat as my sharpened nail nipped on the pink peak of his nipple. Without taking my eyes off him, I lowered my mouth to the cut and sucked. Hard.

A rush of euphoric pleasure erupted in me, setting my very soul ablaze. Colours filled the dark of my mind as my teeth slipped through his flesh, encouraging more of his blood to feed me. 

Fingers clawed through my hair, tugging on the brown curls until my scalp ached. Marius did not pull me back, at least not straight away. He allowed me to drink and drink and drink, until my essence joined with Marius, binding us like entwined serpents. 

I prided myself on control of my magic, but in moments such as these, when Marius cried out my name as he gave me his life freely, there was no stopping it from becoming its own entity. Winds ripped through the room, caressing our naked bodies with unseen hands. The candles burned brighter, taller. Far beyond the castle’s walls, the lake Marius had once shown me, thrashed as though a storm ruled above it. 

I was both everywhere and nowhere.

‘You are hungry, my darling,’ Marius said, pulling me away from his chest until my teeth tore free and the blood pumped across his torso. Within moments, the puncture wounds healed. Proof of what had occurred could be found in the puddle of blood in the center of his clavicle and the smear across my lips. 

‘I can manage it,’ I said, almost rushed. There was nothing I wanted more than to never have to leave this room. Marius’s blood was glory, but it would not sustain me. It was dead, as we were. To fuel us, we had to drink from the living ⎯ to steal their essence and replace the space life once dwelled inside it, if only for a short time. 

If we longed to share in this eternal life, we had to hunt. 

In the beginning, when my body was new, I loved every moment. We tore through Darkmourn, our minds lost and careless. I remembered tearing into Mother’s coven ⎯ Marius did not intervene as I did so. 

Our slaughter should have stopped with the coven, but it didn’t. 

I could have counted on both hands just how many times we left the confines of the towering stone walls which we called home. There was no need to leave Castle Dread, not when we had everything we required. Each other. Except blood ⎯ perhaps the most important thing to me now, even if I did not wish to admit it to myself. 

Marius was my everything, as I was his. But we would be nothing if we did not drink. His brow furrowed. Deep lines creased across his forehead, framed by the ivory-white hair splayed across the pillow, unkept from our entanglement. ‘Jak⎯.’

I silenced him with a kiss, delighting in the moan which erupted from him. Before Marius could utter another word, I grasped beneath me, took his hardened cock in my hand and positioned it by my hole. I sank upon him, back arching as every inch of him entered me. His nails pinched into the fleshy skin of my ass, gripping each cheek and squeezing.

‘Now, my Lord,’ I sang, looking down at him through my lashes. If there was one part of my life before Marius which death did not take away, it was my ability to seduce with a look, entice with a silent promise glistening across my lips. ‘Dawn will soon be upon us. Why not fuck me until Katherine arrives for breakfast?’

His crimson eyes rolled back into his skull as I rocked back and forth, using the muscles of my thighs as leverage. Marius had eight mounds of muscle. I had memorised each one with touch and sight. They rippled like water disturbed by stone, tensing and relaxing as I gave him the pleasure he so desired. 

‘You cannot…’ Marius began but struggled to form the rest of his words as my sex overcame him. My ego unfurled its wings as I regarded what power I had over him. He may have been stronger, older, well read and accustomed to this curse ⎯ but that all meant little as my ass tightened around his length, squeezing his seed out with every stroke. 

‘Cannot what, my Lord?’ 

He purred, the sounds building at the base of his throat before erupting through gritted teeth. ‘Distract me from your needs.’

‘You are my need, Marius.’ 

The world flipped in the blink of an eye. One moment I was over Marius, straddling his lap as I eased him in and out. The next, I was on my back, legs wrapped around his stone-hard waist as he drove into me. It was a miracle the wall behind the bedframe was not dented. It was hard to discern the smack of his skin against mine, to the slam of wood against stone, which echoed in tandem with his fucking. 

‘This conversation is not over,’ Marius warned, thrusting over and over. The perfectly sculptured muscles across his arms tensed as he leaned over me, propped up by two fists on either side of where I laid. ‘We need to feed before you lose yourself.’

I tightened my ass, squeezing my thighs around him. I leaned up, reaching my arms behind him as I held on. My nails sank into his flesh. ‘Is there not a more suited time to discuss this, perhaps when you are not nine inches deep inside of me?’

Shook passed across his features, smoothing out the tension in his forehead and around his mouth. ‘Nine? Are you attempting to insult me?’

Thud. Flesh against flesh. Wood against stone. 

I drew my nails upwards, splitting skin in two. Shadows slithered from Marius’s back, wings of pure darkness which swallowed the golden light of flames until we were engulfed in smothering silence. 

Watching Marius call upon his power was breath-taking. It was a magic I could not even begin to understand ⎯the remnants of the curse which had been used against him. Tainted essence, wrong and ancient, which had been left as a scar upon him when my ancestor cursed him all those years ago.

It once scared me. Now, it only conjured awe. 

He was, in all sense of the words, a god. But I was too. 

I reached out to the elements, grasping the fire just beyond Marius’s cloak of shadow, fuelling the candles until the light blazed. It cut through his power, leaving nothing but misty trials of dissipating smoke in its wake. It lingered, shying away from my nature. All the while Marius continued driving his cock inside of me. 

‘My powerful beauty,’ Marius groaned, the screwing of his face a tell-tale sign he was almost ready to throw himself into the void of pleasure. 

‘My hungry beast,’ I replied, urgently grasping my cock, jerking it with desperate intent.

Marius wouldn’t take his eyes off me. I felt his gaze, a physical thing, as though he could see through every layer, every illusion. Until he stared directly at the centre of my soul, to the place which bound us together. 

We burst apart together, seamlessly and as one. 

The window exploded open, glass smattering apart against stone as the torrents of nightly wind cast itself through the room. My power extinguished every single flame, dancing amongst Marius’s shadows as though they were the same. 

Marius emptied his seed within me, slowly pulling his cock out until only the curved tip pressed into my entrance. I was not so tidy. My cum splattered across my tensing stomach, filling my belly button with the cloudy liquid. Marius dipped quickly, encasing the sensitive end of my cock in his mouth, drawing the last dregs of my cum out whilst tracing his tongue in tantalising circles. 

I cried out his name, so loud those brave humans who still hid within Darkmourn’s ruined streets likely heard it. 

A cool, gentle hand brushed the brown locks out from my eyes. It was incredible how Marius knew the moment to distract me, before my mind raced away to death and destruction. Guilt was never a step too far behind me, always prepared to sink its blade in my back.

‘You cannot let it rule you, Jak Bishop,’ Marius said as he lowered himself to my side. 

I stared up into the darkened ceiling, grieving the humanity I once had. ‘How long until you no longer thought about it?’ 

Mortality, the devil which taunted me. 

Marius paused, his silence speaking a thousand words. ‘Until you walked into my life.’

I rolled onto my side, placing a hand beneath the side of my face, the other tickling nails across Marius’s bare shoulder. Whenever I sank into these ominous pits full of poisonous thoughts, it was always the way Marius harboured the blame which pained me the most.

Even though it was my fault. I failed to kill him which led to this moment. I found a love unlike anything I could have ever wished for ⎯ but the price I paid was steep. Many people died by my nails, my teeth, my thirst.

‘Come, my beauty.’ Marius stood from the bed, feet within puddles of molten wax. ‘Shall we take a dip in the lake before Katherine arrives?’

I admired his attempt to rid my mind of my thoughts and I couldn’t help but admit it worked, if only a little.

He extended a hand, still as naked as the day he was born. Then we both heard it, the shuffle of feet, the brush of something unwanted within our lands.

‘Marius ⎯ leave it.’

Gone was the offer of a dip in the lake. 

Fury, visceral and scalding, crashed over the room. It tugged on my inner flame, coaxing it out until every wick exploded with a newly lit fire, bathing us both in the glow of cool heat. 

‘I warned them,’ Marius growled, his face cast in a mask of harsh lines. He looked like the monster who chased me through the castle during the Blood Moon. Except this monster was not out of control, no. He was very much in control of his actions, his mind.  

‘Please, Marius. Leave this one, it will pass.’ I patted the bed, pleading with my eyes for Marius to join me.

‘What if they do not, my love? All it would take was one of the undead to push my boundaries, to test me. Then they all will. This is our home. I will not allow them to put what is mine at risk.’

His protective nature over me practically tugged at my cock with unseen hands. ‘You’d leave me, all alone, in bed?’

‘I will be done by breakfast,’ Marius said, his expression softening if only for a moment. He reached for me, placing the point of his nail beneath my chin where he lifted it so I could not turn away. Marius leaned in, his scent wafting gently across my face, my lashes. ‘Believe it or not, but I am practically famished.’

With that, he was gone. Nothing but the disturbed air proved he was ever here at all.

2 - Marius

I had lived a long life, full of death and ruin, but nothing prepared me for watching my beauty tear through Darkmourn, sharp teeth and golden fire. Jak was a god, one of vengeance and will. With the blood of his coven coating his beautiful face, I delighted in the destruction he left in his wake. Now, I wished I had stopped him. I would give anything to do it over, to help ease him into this curse. 

Instead, I had taken his hand and stood beyond Darkmourn, a place which once brimmed with life, and unleashed ruin upon it.

My love suffered greatly. Even when Jak smiled, I saw the pain in his ruby eyes, the eyes I had given him. They were once as blue as the skies themselves ⎯ no, they were brighter. So bright I imagined whatever god blessed the expanse above with such a colour would have been jealous of Jak. Cerulean jewels, doe-wide and riddled with danger. That was before I turned him ⎯ changed him with my blood and brought him back from death’s embrace, only to find himself in the hands of death himself. 

Which was why I kept this from him. To protect him, I told myself. To shield him from more worries and concerns. 

I stalked through the outer gardens of our castle, passing through a courtyard of broken statues. Ivory wrapped around the fragments of stone bodies like serpents. This was once a place I enjoyed being in ⎯ a place I had sat with my mother upon a bench as we pored through books together. Now, like the rest of the world, it was a sour reminder of how time meant nothing. Even when time was endless, I’d found it hard to find meaning. I had told myself I would fix it, and now my eternity had a purpose.

I felt my hounds shiver in the shadows, gold eyes burning through the dark. They howled around me, corporeal beings that were once my only company. This was as much their home as it was ours ⎯ which was why they protected it when my mind was otherwise occupied. 

The undead had begun to show themselves shortly after our massacre of Darkmourn. I thought it was related at first. But I was wrong. To create vampires, it was with the sharing of blood, not a product of our bite. 

And Jak was the only one I would let drink from me. The only one I would give such a life to.

The thought of Jak’s mother drawing the blade across his throat haunted me even now. I did not think that image would ever fade, not entirely. Maybe it would blur and wither, like the wisps of clouds in the summer sky. But it would be there, always.

I brought him back by gifting him my blood. It did not heal him, because the dead are… well, they are dead. My blood simply solidified that truth and gave it meaning. Not life, not exactly. 

Someone was creating vampires. It was becoming more frequent than not to find them lurking within our grounds. I told Jak it was someone from town, pushing the boundaries we had set upon them.

Leave us to our own, and we shall leave you to yours.

To my luck, Jak did not question me. I could not keep the truth from him forever, but if it meant allowing his mind a moment to come to terms with what had been done, I would hold it firm for as long as I could. If he asked me, I would tell him ⎯ at least that was what I told myself. But it was becoming more difficult when every day it seemed another vampire entered our home, threatening the life I attempted to give Jak. 

I did this for him. 

The night shivered around me, draping over my shoulders in a cloak of obsidian. I became one with the night, so much so that the creature did not notice my arrival. It was stalking us, but now I was the hunter.

The man had not long been dead; I smelled it on him as though it was expensive cologne shipped from unknown lands. Crimson eyes glowed against sickly pale skin. Like many other vampires I had encountered, this one had recently fed. His billowing tunic had been torn by the nails of his victim, blood prints left across the once white material, smudges of desperate hands.

He moved slowly, shoulders hunched and eyes always looking, searching for his next feast. The fresh torn flesh hanging from his rough beard was an indication he would not need to feed again so soon but need mattered little when vampires were fresh to bloodlust. Jak had experienced it, only breaking free because I was there to stop him.

Who would stop this creature but me? 

Harsh lines furrowed his brow, enhancing the monstrous mask he adorned. He lifted his head, cocking it back as his nostrils flared, sniffing the air.

‘I smell you,’ it hissed, tongue tearing across newly pointed teeth. 

I did not reveal myself. I kept cloaked in my shadows, watching his feral movements and frantic demeanour. The man’s red stare cast across the wooded expanse, tongue lapping and knees bent. 

He was large in build, muscular and broad-shouldered. It was a talent of mine, to craft stories of people I never knew. It was what kept me going all those years while the curse trapped me in Castle Dread. This man was no different. I allowed myself a moment to study him, pulling strings of a tale together until I formed a history for him.

Whatever this man did for a living, it involved hard labour. His body was crafted for it ⎯ the lifting of a hammer to an anvil. The smell of ash and steel certainly would confirm such a job. He was married, a brass band tight around his ring finger. What had become of his partner ⎯ was that whose flesh clung to his beard and smeared the lower part of his mouth? 

He did not have money, his clothes told me that. Grey strands of hair lingered among thinning black, all but the top of his head which was lacking any hair at all. I placed him around fifty years in age ⎯ old enough to live a life. Old enough that I should not feel guilty for what I was to do next.

Regardless, I always felt guilty. I was only glad this vampire was an adult. I did not believe I could act against them if a child arrived in our lands. 

‘Come out,’ the man sang, a smile sliced across his terrifying face. ‘I want to see you.’

Shedding my shadows, I stepped free of the dark until I stood before the man. 

I expected him to plead, they usually did. I expected him to drop to his knees, to grasp at the bottom of my trousers and beg that I spared him.

This one surprised me. 

The bones in his back creaked like old floors, snapping awkwardly as he lowered himself into a bow. ‘My King, I have come before you to seek⎯’

‘Seek what?’ The question thundered out of me, fuelling the shadow hounds to part around me. In a moment, the man was surrounded. ‘Acceptance? Refuge? What is it you desire from me?’

He looked at me through lashes, not yet raising himself to standing. I had not noticed before, but old pockmarks scarred his face, littering his neck and cheeks in craters of flesh. These were old wounds from before he was turned ⎯perhaps marks of an illness or something worse. 

‘I am one of yours,’ he said, ‘your child. You won’t turn away one of your own, would you?’

A scowl erupted across my face, darkening my eyes and filling them with a lethal promise. ‘You are an abomination.’

He straightened, wafting the scent of dried blood. It was faint, at least, until he opened his mouth and the stale scent of rotten flesh assaulted me. ‘We are the same, are we not?’

I ignored him, pacing slowly towards him, the hounds trailing a foot behind. ‘Who made you?’

It was the same question I had asked the others who dared come close enough to ruin my perfectly crafted illusion.

‘Why you did, sire.’

He was mocking me, testing me. 

‘I will not ask you again.’ 

The man’s hungry eyes shifted beyond my shoulder, directly to my home. More importantly, my beauty who waited ⎯ unknowingly ⎯ within its walls. When he looked back at me, it was not with his false admiration. 

‘I did not ask for this,’ he spat, teeth flashing. 

‘Answer my question,’ I growled. 

‘Look what you have made,’ he said, uncaring for me. There was no fear in his eyes. He was drunk to bloodlust, unaware of the danger lingering before him. Then again, what did the dead truly have to fear?

You, I reminded myself, Death fears you.

‘Lord Marius, because of you I have been made. Because of you, my children are nothing but torn bodies left in their beds, never to wake again. I wanted to live to see them grow. Instead, I survived only to rip them to shreds.’

Who is to blame? Am I? Are you? 

My story had a correction. The skin in his beard, the blood across his mouth and ripped clothes, were not from his wife. It was his children’s deaths which ruined him. In that moment, I understood what this man was here for. Revenge. The gleam in his red eyes was the same I saw in Jak’s when we stood above Darkmourn that fateful night. 

I softened my demeanour, casting away my shadows and silently demanding the hounds to leave. ‘I am sorry for what has been done to you⎯’

‘Are you?’ the man spat.

He did not move, not as I stood before him and placed a careful hand upon his shoulder. ‘I am. It is not fair. I understand why you are here. You want someone to answer for the life which had been taken for you. You wish for someone to pay for the unfortunate tragedy of your child’s deaths.’

‘I killed them!’ 

I slapped a hand over his mouth, not caring for the tearing of my palm against his teeth. He was strong, but his strength meant little to me. I grasped him firmly, refusing to let his mouth go. If Jak heard, it would be over. 

‘Silence yourself.’ I was standing behind the man in a blink, one hand on his mouth, my spare arm wrapped around his chest much like the ivory encased the stone statues over the hedgerow. My lips moved close to his ear, brushing the cold skin so gently I felt him stiffen.

‘I am going to give you one more chance to tell me who made you,’ I lied, but he did not need to know that. ‘Then we are going to fix this issue, solve it together. Do I make myself clear?’ 

It took a moment, but I felt him nod once, sharp and rushed. Another moment and I released his mouth, but not his body.

The man prepared himself, lips parting as he took a hulking breath in. ‘You will lose the one you love, whether it is by my hand or another. Then you will feel exactly the pain this curse causes, you will⎯’

Skin ripped. Bones snapped. I tore the man’s head from his shoulder with one swift tug, silencing him forever. I gripped his hair so tightly that strands strangled my fingers and ripped out of his scalp. 

The body burst apart in a cloud of ash long before it fell to the ground. By the time I released the head, the faint winds caught the remains and blew them away until there was no proof this man had ever been here.

It was never easy ⎯ killing. It wasn’t before Jak, or after him. It weighed heavy on my chest, pressing down as though unseen hands prevented me from ever taking a full breath. Not that I needed to breathe, doing so was simply a habit I kept to claw onto my humanity. 

One visit to my library and it was evident how I responded. This nameless man was no different. I would find the time to fill empty pages with the life he had but was not permitted to finish. Except his spine, much like the other undead I had destroyed in the past months, would not have their names etched in gold leaf. 

Dawn slithered across the sky, breaking apart the darkness until orange and red tones bled. I stood there until my skin itched beneath the light. When I could not bear it another moment, I steeled myself and moved back to my home.

To my beauty.