Of Blood and Blindfolds

She was left on the mountain as food.Alessia of Corvain is twenty-two years old when her father walks her up the Mountain of Sacrifice, ties her to a black slab, and leaves without looking back. What comes for her in the dark is not the monster the priests promised. It carries her to a palace with no doors, sets a coin of warmth behind her sternum without asking, and comes to her only after the lamps go out.She may not seek his name. She may not seek his face.She lights the lamp anyway.What she loses for it costs more than the god. Cast out into a dead country with a Mark that eats her memory a piece at a time, Alessia is found by the thing the mountain was supposed to send: a beast of bone and wire called Caspian.The goddess has put a price on Alessia's head. A witch has spent weeks bending Caspian over a bowl of black water to hunt her down, and he has found her, and he has told no one where she is.A goddess is waiting with three impossible tasks. One of the two men who love her asked before he took. The other did not. And the price of walking out of this alive is a name Alessia has not spoken since she was fourteen.Of Blood and Blindfolds is a dark fantasy romance retelling of Cupid and Psyche, in which the woman left out as a sacrifice refuses both endings offered to her and writes a third.A standalone.Content note: For adult readers, 18+. Graphic violence, explicit sexual content, captivity, coercive control, dubious consent, torture, and body horror. A full and specific content note appears at the front of the book.