Novels by Tily Iris

AureliaWe met after dark in a disused study off the eastern wing, the four of us crowded around a table meant for two, a single lamp throwing more shadow than light across the room. Corvin had come because he'd insisted. Kieran had come because he'd refused to let Corvin come alone. Talon was still confined to his bed, which meant this was the first conversation of real consequence I'd had without him in it since the wedding, and I felt the absence more sharply than I expected."Start from the beginning," Corvin said. "What exactly did your father say?"Draven lowered himself carefully into a chair, the movement costing him more than he wanted to show. "He said her name first. Isolde. I told you that much in the letter. But that wasn't the part that mattered.""Then what was?""He said it like a man talking about someone he'd known personally," Draven said. "Not a rival Alpha's wife he'd ordered killed for political reasons. He said, and I'm giving you his exact words because I've do

Aurelia"Send it," I said.Corvin studied me a moment longer, searching my face for hesitation he didn't find, and then he nodded once and rose from the bench. "Then it's done. I'll have riders out before nightfall."The waiting was the worst part. Four days passed with no word, four days of Talon slowly mending under the healers' care, of Kieran hovering at his bedside making terrible jokes to cover his worry, of Corvin fielding a dozen new messages from packs who'd suddenly remembered the Infernal alliance was worth cultivating. Four days of my own imagination filling every silence with the sound of a sentence ending mid-word.On the fifth morning, a horn sounded from the western wall.I was on the battlements before anyone could stop me, and what I saw riding toward the gates below made my knees go weak beneath me. Nightshade banners. Two dozen riders in formation. And at their head, sitting his horse like it cost him something to stay upright, was Draven.Alive.By the time I reac

AureliaThe healers took Talon away within minutes, Kieran refusing to leave his side despite three separate attempts to send him elsewhere, and the crowd slowly dispersed under the council's watchful direction, though the whispers trailing after them made it clear the story of what had just happened would outrun the actual retelling of it before the sun even reached midday.Corvin found me sitting alone on an overturned bench near the ring's edge, staring at the dark stain in the dirt where Talon had fallen, my hands still trembling faintly with the aftershock of power I hadn't fully learned to control."You should be resting," he said, lowering himself onto the bench beside me without waiting for an invitation."I should be doing a lot of things," I said. "Resting isn't at the top of the list right now."He was quiet for a moment, studying me with an expression I hadn't seen from him before, something careful and unguarded that sat strangely on a face I'd only ever known as calculat

Aurelia"—already finished," I said, and my voice didn't sound like my own anymore, low and resonant in a way that carried across the entire yard without my needing to raise it at all.I had vaulted the fence before I fully decided to, Infernal law and council tradition and every warning Corvin had ever given me about restraint burning away the instant I saw that hooded blade rise a second time above Talon's exposed back.I didn't think about the consequences. I thought about the sound his body had made hitting the dirt, and then I was simply moving, faster than I had any right to move, faster than anyone in that yard had ever seen an omega move because I wasn't one, not anymore, not for a long time now.The hooded fighter never landed the second strike.I caught their wrist mid-swing and felt something surge up through my arm and out into the space between us, raw and hot and entirely unfamiliar even after everything I'd already unleashed inside that shattered altar room, and the fig

Aurelia"—which means if she went to the trouble of forging a release condition into the spell itself, someone wanted this exact bloodline joined together for a reason bigger than punishing you," Wren was saying, pacing the narrow strip of floor in front of my bed as the candle burned down toward morning. "That's not revenge, Aurelia. That's a plan.""A plan I still don't understand," I said. "And one I don't have time to untangle before Talon walks into that ring in a few hours.""Then untangle it after," Wren said. "Survive today first.""That's not exactly comforting.""I never said it would be," she said, already moving toward the window. "Comfort isn't my department. Staying alive is. Try to remember which one matters more before the sun comes up."She was gone before I could argue further, slipping back out into the dark the way she always did, and I sat alone with the parchment's single damning line still burning behind my eyes until exhaustion finally won out over dread and dr

Aurelia"You know her," Kieran said, watching my face with an intensity that had nothing left of the softness from a moment ago."I trained under her," I said. "Three years ago. Ren was the best fighter the Academy had ever produced, and she made sure everyone knew it, especially the omegas she considered beneath her notice.""That's not the same as knowing someone.""No," I admitted. "But I know how she fights. I know she doesn't lose, and I know she doesn't take contracts unless she's certain of the outcome before she ever steps into the ring."Kieran's expression darkened further. "Then Talon needs to know exactly what he's walking into, tonight, not tomorrow morning when it's too late to prepare for it."We found him in the armory, quietly checking the edge of a blade by torchlight, and the moment he saw both our faces, he set the weapon down without being asked."Tell me,” he said.I told him everything I remembered about Ren, the way she fought low and patient, waiting for her o