THE DARK SWORD
BOOK TWO OF THE ARIDRYN TRILOGY
COMING OCTOBER 2026
To save the man she loves, Ren’wyn must embrace the darkness within her—and the destiny that could tear them apart.
The Kickstarter was fully funded. Thank you for helping bring The Dark Sword to life.
SHE SURVIVED. SHE ESCAPED.
SHE IS STILL LEARNING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE.
Ren’wyn Nyvaris has spent her life obeying, enduring, surviving. Now, for the first time, she knows exactly what she wants.
And it’s impossible.
Somewhere in the darkness of Lissea’s dungeon, Fael waits. Bringing him home means risking everything for the man she loves. The man who deceived her. The man she no longer knows if she can trust.
Because Fael is Falorian Greywood—the crown prince of the empire that hunted her kind to extinction.
As rebellion stirs across Aridryn and ancient magic draws six souls toward a destiny none of them yet understand, Ren’wyn discovers that saving one man may change the fate of them all.
Love costs more than she ever imagined. Freedom means more than escaping the past. And Ren’wyn’s choice may change the future of magic itself.
FOR READERS WHO LOVE
1 / FOUND FAMILY & FORBIDDEN POWER
Found family forged in dangerous places
A morally gray heroine embracing her power
Magical outcasts united by a shared destiny
Rebellion against a brutal empire
2 / DEVOTION & BROKEN TRUST
A cinnamon-roll hero with a devastating secret
Touch-her-and-die devotion
Secret identities and broken trust
3 / HURT, COMFORT & HARD-WON HEALING
Hurt/comfort and hard-won healing
Mental-health representation woven into the characters’ journeys
Romance where love does not erase the work of recovery
Adult romantic epic fantasy · Open-door romance · Book Two of a continuing trilogy
THE HEALER
REN’WYN NYVARIS
Ren’wyn escaped the future chosen for her, but freedom has not silenced the voices of the past.
Haunted by the dead and still learning the reach of her evolving magic, she must decide what she is willing to risk for love—and whether she can trust herself to choose the life she wants.
Her darkness was never the thing that made her broken.
It may be the power that changes everything.
THE WARRIOR
FAEL · FALORIAN GREYWOOD
The man Ren’wyn knew as Fael is Falorian Greywood: a berserker, a former imperial soldier, and the renegade crown prince of the Ashkren Empire.
He showed her tenderness when she expected cruelty. He protected her without demanding her obedience. He taught her that even darkness deserved to be loved.
He also built their love around a lie.
Now he waits in the hands of an enemy, while the truth of his name threatens everything they were beginning to become.
SIX SOULS.
SIX MAGICS.
ONE FUTURE NONE OF THEM CAN FACE ALONE.
Magic has survived in secret—in the dead, the earth, the body, the heart, and the scattered people the empire failed to destroy.
Now ancient power is drawing six souls together.
They are wounded, divided, and dangerously unprepared. But as rebellion spreads across Aridryn, their strange fellowship may be the only thing standing between the Ashkren Empire and the extinction of magic itself.
A STORY OF SURVIVAL, AGENCY, AND THE WORK OF BECOMING FREE
SURVIVAL IS NOT THE END OF A LIFE.
Escape is an event. Freedom is something Ren’wyn must learn to build.
The Dark Sword explores the restoration of identity after long-term trauma, the complicated search for agency within cPTSD, and the fear that being loved may require becoming someone easier to love.
It is a story about discovering that healing is not obedience in a gentler form. That survival is not the end of a life. And that power does not make a wounded woman unworthy of tenderness, belonging, or choice.
THIS STORY BEGINS WITH
THE DARK MAGE
The Dark Sword is the second book in the Aridryn Trilogy and is not intended to be read as a standalone.
In The Dark Mage, Ren’wyn escapes an abusive arranged marriage and enters the fractured world of Aridryn, where magic is forbidden. Alongside Fael, a battle-scarred soldier with secrets of his own, she discovers that her darkness may be more than a source of fear.
It may be the beginning of a rebellion.