Book 1 Summary
The Gilded Cage:
In New Aetheria, the poor grind divine fossils into dust for the luxury of the elites who live above the smog in floating sky-districts. Seventeen-year-old Elara Thorne works sixteen-hour shifts in the Bone Mills and watches her younger brother Finn die of Ash Lung. When a factory heir tries to ruin her and the law offers no protection, she breaks into a forbidden temple and steals the last relic of a dead god: the Gilded Crown. It fuses to her skull, gifting her the power to heal wounds, transmute matter, and turn hoarded medicine into food. To the forsaken, she becomes a hero—the Golden Reaper. To the elites, she is a terrorist. But the truth is worse. Every miracle Elara performs spreads a golden plague, petrifying the city she swore to protect. Finn's veins shine with gold as his body stiffens. And the dead god beneath New Aetheria begins to stir.
The Gilded Cage launches The Gilded Curse Trilogy with a story of rebellion, sacrifice, and forbidden love in a world where divine power always demands payment. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Suzanne Collins, this darkly romantic fantasy asks: what would you save if every act of heroism carried a curse?
Series Information:
In New Aetheria, a city literally built atop the bones of a dead god, seventeen-year-old Elara Thorne works the Bone Mills by day and watches her brother Finn fade by night. The rich float above in glimmering sky-districts; the forsaken cough ash below. When a factory heir corners her and the law offers no mercy, Elara breaks into a forbidden temple and steals the last relic of divinity: the Gilded Crown. It fuses to her skull like a brand and floods her veins with wonder. Walls ripple into gold at the touch of her palm, wounds knit with a glance, and hoarded medicine becomes bread for the starving. The city names her a hero. The city is wrong.
Every miracle has a ledger. A spectral Golden Raven—mercy's last fragment—whispers the truth: the crown does not grant power; it borrows it from tomorrow. Each life Elara saves is a debt the future must pay with interest. Slowly, beautifully, horribly, a glittering plague crawls across New Aetheria. Books turn to metal mid-sentence. Flowers harden on their stems.
The Gilded Curse Trilogy is a darkly romantic, morally thorny YA fantasy about the cost of miracles and the rebellion required to love a world enough to change it. It blends steampunk spectacle—bone-and-brass engines, floating districts, signal mirrors over siege walls—with mythic awe: titans rolling in their tombs, a city that edits itself when you blink, and a battlefield where ordinary people link hands to share the price of saving one another. The romance simmers and survives transformation; the heroine makes terrible, necessary choices; forgiveness is earned, never assumed.
By the last book, armies collide and gods wake—only for Elara to choose a third path neither martyrdom nor godhood. She humanizes the divine, shatters the crowns, frees the tyrant from his demon, and births mortal magic: a power that strengthens only when it is shared. Scarred and still learning to dream, Elara helps forge the Golden Compact, a covenant society where no throne sits higher than a promise kept. This is a story about power, yes—but more than that, it is a story about who we become when the future finally belongs to us.