Hollowmere - Part 1

Hollowmere — Part One: The Arrangement

For generations, the village of Hollowmere has kept a secret as old as the fog that rolls off its black lake every evening: an unspoken pact between the living and the ancient, undead family that rules from the manor on the hill. The dead don't feed on the living. The living don't carry torches up the hill. It's a peace built on silence — until now.

Herbalist Elara Voss has spent two years watching Gideon Ashworth, the manor's centuries-old steward, invent reasons to visit her shop three evenings a week, neither of them willing to name what's grown between them. But Elara isn't the only one waiting: Thomas, her childhood friend, has loved her for years and never found the courage to say so, while Julian — Gideon's reckless, hungry-hearted creation — has decided he's done waiting altogether.

Into this fragile balance walks a stranger with too many knives and a scar he won't explain — a man who has watched an arrangement like Hollowmere's collapse once before, and has come looking for the cracks in this one.

A slow-burn gothic romance of old love, older rules, and the fire that starts when patience finally runs out.