Title: Moonlight and the Mirror

Series: The Moonlight Curse, Book Three

Author: Evelynn Carver

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 11/03/2026

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 472

Genre: Fantasy, fantasy, gay/M/M, action/adventure, bonded, demons, established couple, magic/magic users, monsters/ demons, gore, spells, royalty, shifters, spies, family drama, violence

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Description

Exiled prince Brand Lykanos and his partner Valentino Vicari are living quietly in the tropics until fate drags them back to the kingdom they once fled. With a demonic curse looming over them, they agree to a perilous ruse: fake their execution to buy their freedom. But death, even staged, has consequences—and the deeper they dig into the curse’s origins, the clearer it becomes that it began long ago with another story of forbidden love.

A hundred years past, Felideran mage and assassin Valencia Vicari enters the enemy king’s castle in disguise expecting to meet a tyrant. Instead, she finds Castor Lykanos, a soft-spoken ruler haunted by his brother’s legacy and driven by desperation. As Valencia uncovers a dangerous secret, she realizes she may be the savior her people need and the only one who can stop a curse from consuming the realm. It’s too bad her heart has other ideas.

As Brand and Valentino infiltrate an ancient cult, hoping to uncover a way to reverse the curse, they unknowingly follow in Valencia’s footsteps as she escapes from Castor’s castle with blood on her hands. When their paths converge on a haunted battlefield, past and present collide, binding them in blood, fire, and a final choice that could break the curse or destroy them all.

Moonlight and the Mirror is a romantic epic fantasy full of sharp-tongued banter, twisted legacies, and found family. Perfect for fans of Freya Marske and C.L. Polk, this is a tale of how love, in all its forms, can twist a soul or save it.

Moonlight and the Mirror is the third book in the series and will be best enjoyed if read in order.

Excerpt

Moonlight and the Mirror
Evelynn Carver © 2026
All Rights Reserved

Brand’s palms began to sweat as he stared at the faded scrap of paper in his hands. He’d studied his mother’s drawing a thousand times, traced every line, memorized every curve. Now, standing at the foot of the hill with the sun hot on his back and salt in the air, he beheld the real thing at last. Though not entirely accurate, the rendering was close enough to be undeniable, depicting the shape of the archways, the number of pillars, the elegant curves of the capped roofs, shining in the balmy sunlight—all of it as she had sketched out many years ago. Though not a palace, not quite, it seemed near enough. It stood like something out of a storybook, a beautiful, shining star overlooking the bustling marketplace below, all hidden in the center of a tropical paradise surrounded by the ruins of war.

Brand stood staring at the house on the hill for a long time from under the shade of a mango tree, his stomach heavy as if filled with stones.

He likely had relatives in that house. Extremely likely. But how could he face them? He couldn’t exactly waltz up to the front door and knock. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere.

Blending into the marketplace came easily enough. Unlike the streets back home, the markets teemed with all sorts, flush with colors and smells and shouting between shopkeepers and haggling customers. Food was all around him: spices and sweets, fresh fruit and vegetables overflowing from stalls and baskets, pans of oil frying this or that in the muggy afternoon heat. Teahouses lined every other block, full of old men arguing over cards and dice, children laughing, and musicians playing instruments he had never seen, much less heard before. Magic drifted through it all, the small, everyday kind of boiling kettles, mending socks, and growing things. Nothing about it resembled the tidy farming villages in Felidereaux or the stinking, labyrinthine alleys back in Kaenys.

Dengaluru thrived—a loud and lively, beautifully bustling society built on the ruins of an ancient way of life that had nearly been erased, but instead burst forth, vibrant and stubborn, from between the cracks.

Brand should feel at home here. No one gave him a second glance as he fetched letters and delivered discreet packages or went about any of the various chores and tasks to earn his keep. Brand, unlike Valentino, blended in easily, his warm brown skin and dark hair much like most of the populace on the island. This land belonged to his mother, after all.

He could only speak a few sentences of the language fluently though, the rest a broken garbled mess of Dengalese and the Queen’s Common they spoke on the mainland where he’d been born and raised. His father had forbidden his mother to speak her native tongue to her children. Though Brand knew a few of her songs, he didn’t know their full meaning. He couldn’t carry on a proper conversation with the people here without giving himself away as an outsider, and if someone got a bit too close, caught his eyes in the right light, terror clawed up his spine that they might see a tyrant staring back at them. Sometimes as he passed a mirror, he caught his reflection and found his father scowling from the glass instead. Would the people here know what the king across the ocean looked like? Brand didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to catch too much attention, not after everything he had done.

What would his grandparents think of him? His mother had rarely ever spoken of them, terrified of inciting her husband’s wrath. Could they still be alive? And if so, would they want to meet the son of the monster who had taken their precious daughter away, the power-hungry king who had tried to drain this beautiful island dry? With every moonrise, Brand grew more and more afraid of becoming more like him.

After his bond with Valentino last winter, the curse had…changed. Something inside him had shifted, the mixing of magic altering the contract written in his blood, but unfortunately not curing. Not breaking.

He needed to get back to the inn, back to Valentino’s side, and he needed to do it soon. Being apart had taken a toll. Even now in the warm tropical afternoon, the cold magic of the curse swam right under his skin, slinking about and waiting to be set free, gnawing at him. The comforting warmth of Valentino’s magic lay half an island away, and without it, the demon grew ravenous.

The damn thing had plagued Brand his entire life, but just a season ago, he’d been barely aware of the creature’s presence in flashes and fever dreams, the bulk of it only surging forth completely once every full moon. Now, it dogged him relentlessly, always lurking, waiting, biding its time, itching at the back of his skull every day and night. Valentino, with his supernova surplus of power, certainly helped to soothe the itch, but that presented another problem entirely. Brand worried more and more about becoming a drain on their partnership, and the guilt and fear weighed heavily on his heart. Did hungry shadows torment his father the same way, consuming him from the inside out? Had he eaten all his wife’s magic away through their bond, until she slowly lost her mind as well?

The sound of a carriage approaching up the road startled Brand out of his reverie, and he stepped back to let it pass.

But instead of a single carriage, a caravan of them came around the bend, the ones in front and back carrying a group of men in striking black uniforms, sashed in red. The center carriage, large and splendid, had a tasseled canopy shading its solitary rider from the sun. When they passed, Brand caught a glimpse of the occupant’s profile—an elegant, elderly woman draped in finery, gold chains and bangles dripping from her ears, nose, and neck. Something about her struck him as startlingly familiar, and for a moment he could only gape.

Brand stared after her as the final carriage passed, nerves jangling, and then he stepped out and followed them, calling out.

“Pardon me, my lady!” He prayed he used passible Dengalese. “May I have a word?”

One guard shouted at him, turning on his horse and pointing a spear in Brand’s direction.

Brand held up his hands. “I just want to talk with the lady for a moment, please. I mean no harm.”

Another guard joined the first one, and they converged on him.

Sweating, Brand turned to run, but another shout stopped him as the lady herself spoke loudly and sternly to her driver, and the carriage stopped.

Brand took the chance. “My lady! My lady, I apologize for interrupting your travels, but—”

The guards yelled at him again, so Brand yelled louder.

“Lady Al’Uldahl. It’s about your daughter—your daughter, Deepika. I’m her—”

One of the guards hit Brand in the stomach with the butt of his spear, and he fell to the ground with a grunt, the air knocked out of him.

Another sharp word from the lady made the guards pause as she stepped down from her carriage and approached, pushing between them.

Gasping, Brand squinted up at her.

The lady frowned down at him with a dark, unreadable gaze, staring for nearly a full minute, taking in every feature, finally settling on his eyes. Her expression did not change, no light of recognition or a raised eyebrow, but when she spoke again, she did so precisely, as if for his benefit.

“Bring him with us. Now.”

Instead of to a dungeon, the guards ushered Brand into the estate’s courtyard. There, they indicated a plush cushion and told him to wait.

Brand blinked in the sunlight, squinting at his surroundings. The house, more awe-inducing up close, had pale white stone walls, gleaming with elaborate designs cut into them, and ceiling and floor tiles inlaid with chips of colorful glass. He sat, enchanted, in this beautiful stained-glass confection, flanked with tropical trees and gently gurgling fountains. All of it, so jarringly different from his father’s dusty old castle, made him wonder how his mother had ever been convinced to leave this place, royal marriage or not. He pondered this in silence, the guards watching him dutifully from the nearby doorway.

Not more than a quarter hour later, the grand lady joined him, her jewelry and finery gone except for a single shining stud in her nose and a pleated fall of gold-embroidered cloth draped over her shoulder, stark against the rich green of her dress. She wore her long hair parted at the center and gathered severely in a thick gray coil at her nape. Brand found the style rather unnervingly reminiscent of a cobra preparing to strike.

She did not speak as a maid served them tea from a steaming pot and then hurried away, leaving them alone except for another pair of guards standing several yards away near the fountain.

Lady Al’Uldahl took a sip of her tea and regarded him coolly through the fragrant steam.

“You are my grandson, I take it?” She spoke with a crisp and elegant accent, a combination of the lyrical bounce of her native tongue and his own unaffected Common from the continent.

Brand’s heart beat wildly in his chest. “Yes, I think so, my lady. My name is Brand. Brandahl Lykanos. I’m the son of Queen Deepika Al’Uldahl a Lykanos. Your daughter?”

She nodded and took a drink. “You’re the one that killed him, then? My son-in-law, the scoundrel who called himself a king.”

Brand swallowed. News traveled fast. This pretty courtyard, filled with plush pillows, fountains, and guards with spears, made a strange space for a murder confession. But when he gazed into her eyes, Brand knew he could not lie to her. He’d grown so sick of lying.

“Yes, that’s right.”

She took another sip of her tea. “How did you do it?”

Brand had expected at least a gasp or a frown, but her expression remained placid, as if discussing the weather.

“How, my lady?”

“You heard me, boy. Do not spare the details.”

A year ago, his father had transformed into a demon in broad daylight in the middle of the castle chapel. He’d flown into a wild rage, and Brand and Valentino had put him down. The image of the creature’s lifeless form, bloody and smoking in the middle of the chapel aisle, remained etched into the back of Brand’s eyelids. He flexed his hands, recalling the way the sword had vibrated as it scraped against his father’s spine. Brand did not regret it for one moment, not after he learned what his father had done to his mother, what he had hoped to do to Brand himself, what he tried to do to Valentino there between the rows of pews. Still, the image haunted him, mocking him from an ocean away.

His grandmother waited for an answer. Her eyes remained hard and emotionless, but as Brand stared at her, he noticed a barely perceptible sharpness that hadn’t been there before. He suddenly understood and did not hesitate any longer.

“I used a sword. Ran him through the back, my lady. We opened his throat, too, and burned him.”

Valentino had done that last bit, of course, but it brought Brand instant relief, confessing to the bare, honest truth.

Lady Al’Uldahl set her teacup on the small table between them and dabbed her lips with a napkin. When she finally smiled, her even, white teeth gleamed like a crescent moon on a dark, clear night. “Very good. Now, what can I do for you, dear boy?”

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Meet the Author

Evelynn recently moved to southern Japan with her partner, child, and various cats. In her free time, she reads genre fiction, plays video games, watches cartoons, and engages in other related unseemly behavior. She’s been writing and drawing stories since she was in grade school and would one day love to grow up to be a Real Author.

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