Starless Reign

Humanity's defenders have become its owners.

Beyond the fortified settlements, the Maw moves beneath the ground. It tears through roads, takes bodies apart, and uses what it finds. Guns can slow it. Walls can delay it. The vampire bloodlines are the reason there's still anyone left to defend.

Keeping them strong requires human blood.

Inside the perimeter, families work the estates and supply the feeding rooms. Their obligations pass to their children. Their rulers decide how much they can give, how long they must serve, and whether they're ever permitted to leave.

Princess Sabine has spent her life holding that perimeter. She's dragged wounded soldiers out of collapsing buildings and left civilians behind when saving them would've cost the people already aboard. She knows what survival demands. She's been raised to make other people pay it.

Now she's taking the throne of a kingdom that's running out of people to sacrifice.

Her soldiers are exhausted, the feeding system is killing the civilians who sustain it, and powerful noble families still expect others to bear the cost of their protection. A treatment that can turn vampires human offers escape from the hunger-but could also strip the defenses of the strength keeping the Maw outside.

Sabine won't let her people be consumed while the court debates whose lives are worth saving. She'll seize the supplies her armies need, break the families withholding them, and fight for ground others have already surrendered.

But every order reaches someone she knows. The soldiers who've followed her through years of war begin asking to leave. Those closest to her question what she's keeping them alive for. Even the man she loves refuses to accept that protecting people gives her the right to decide their futures.

Sabine has taken the crown because she believes she can keep them alive. Holding it will cost her the loyalties she's depended on, the love she thought she could keep, and the few people who could still reach her without an order.

She intends to keep the city standing.

Even if the people inside it never forgive her.

Dark Star is Book One of a gothic science-fiction series. It features a ruthless vampire queen, biological horror, political conflict, and the devastating personal cost of power. Contains graphic violence and a tragic love story.