Warmth filled my heart. I was weightless, my spirits soaring as I tipped her chin up and brushed my lips over hers. “You’re real funny.” I grinned against her mouth. Suddenly, we were both laughing too hard, smiling too hard, despite the darkness closing in on us.
At Izabelle’s side, the horses began to squeal and snort.
“Shut up Jigsaw,” we both yelled.
I kissed her harder, smiling the whole time, reveling in the moment. I knew I’d never get enough of this brown-eyed girl who devastated a wasteland, but if she thought this was a happy ending... If that’s what she was telling herself now, I knew better. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d hate what was waiting for us around the corner.
But maybe, just maybe, together we were enough to overcome murder and unkindness. We weren’t done yet.
Not by a long shot.
The End
ENJOYED THIS STORY? Be sure to leave a review! Book two in this series is coming June 2020!
About the Author
MIA HEINTZELMAN IS a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. An avid reader, she always has a book in her purse, loves to pair sweet and spicy tea with fluffy socks, and can’t go wrong with polka dots and pearls. She lives in Las Vegas with her husband and two children.
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Mixed Signals
Mixed Match
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It’s Got a Ring to It
Mia Heintzelman writing as Emmaline Zanthi
The Stacks
CALLOUS
Palace of Vile Hearts Book 1
Leigh Kelsey
About Callous
Don’t go near Sirendale, or you’ll lose your way.
Don’t go near the palace, or you’ll lose weeks of time.
Don’t go near the royals, or you’ll lose your mind.
In the shadows of the English countryside, a ruthless elite reign. With compulsion and lures, the siren royals of Windermere Palace have been invincible for too long, bending mortals and lesser sirens alike to their will with a simple touch and a low, purring command.
Last month, they broke Celeste’s best friend, twisted her mind with their compulsion and left her to put the pieces of herself back together. This month, Celeste will steal the identity of a dead siren princess, infiltrate their palace, and find a way to ruin them like they ruined her friend.
They think they’re untouchable. Celeste is about to show them that vile hearts can break too.
Palace of Vile Hearts is an enemies-to-lovers revenge RH series full of steam and dubious romance. These sirens are total, entitled a**holes, and compel their way through life. If you like opulent masques, boys who need taking down a peg or two, and lush, glittering palaces full of lies, secrets, and betrayal, welcome to Windermere Palace. Check your back for knives before you leave.
Fast burn. Not intended for younger readers. 20,000 words.
Note on Callous
Callous is a dark romance, and as such, there are some things you may find triggering. The harem in this book are sirens, with compulsion magic, and even though the main character is immune to their lure, there are some scenes that contain dubious consent. If dark subjects offend you, this may not be the book for you
Leigh
Prologue
The royals of Windermere Palace were untouchable. Invincible. Beyond reproach and above the law. No one could touch them—and, so far, no one had even tried.
But Celeste wouldn’t stop until she’d brought them down. Even if it took everything from her, she’d ruin them. The royals valued three things: money, power, and each other. By the time Celeste was done, they’d have nothing left. Broke, powerless, and alone, that was how she’d leave them.
She’d set secret, minor explosives in their relationships and blast everything they cared about to pieces. She’d cripple their wealth, expose them to auditors and investigators until they had nothing left. She’d take their precious palace out from under their feet.
Bit by bit, day by day, she’d bring their world crumbling down around them.
And they’d deserve everything they got.
Shattered
Someone was going to suffer for this.
Celeste inhaled a sharp breath, her hand falling limply from the door she’d just opened as she stared at the lump of tulle, caramel skin, and cornsilk hair collapsed on her doorstep. A sob rattled the hunched-over figure and Celeste snapped out of her shock, kneeling and gathering Kimber—her best friend for seven years—into her arms, trying to think clearly even as she reeled with total shock. What the hell had happened to Kimber? And why was she in a fucking ballgown?
“They made me leave,” Kimber sobbed, a shudder moving through her body as Celeste held her tight. She looked up suddenly, her blue eyes locking onto Celeste’s. “They made me leave, they made me leave them, Cee.”
Celeste was lost for words for a horrible moment, just holding her friend, rubbing Kimber’s back, no idea what to do, not sure what had even happened.
Who were they?
“Who, Kimber?” she asked softly. “Who made you leave? And leave where?”
“The palace,” Kimber gasped urgently, grabbing onto Celeste’s arm tightly enough to make her wince. “I need to go back, I need to be with them. I love them, I’ll die without them—”
Celeste’s stomach tightened into a nauseated knot. This wasn’t her witty, sarcastic, power-suit-wearing best friend. Celeste wasn’t sure she recognised the woman in her arms. She brushed fair hair from Kimber’s face, a bolt of alarm going through her at the vacant look in her friend’s eyes, the cerulean of her irises entirely glazed over. Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“When you say the palace,” Celeste asked, trying not to panic but already breathing faster, “you don’t mean Windermere Palace, do you, Kim? Tell me you don’t.”
“I need to go back,” Kimber replied fiercely, squeezing Celeste’s forearms so roughly that her fingernails bit into skin and Celeste hissed in pain. “I need to be with them at the palace. Do you understand? I need to go back.” Her vivid eyes filled with tears, her bottom lip wobbling. “But I don’t know how to get back. They made me forget.”
Celeste swallowed the giant lump in her throat, her eyes pricking. She hated the glazed look in Kimber’s eyes, the desperate rasp of her voice, as if she’d been screaming for hours. She especially hated that she knew exactly how she’d got in this state.
Everyone knew not to go near the woods of Lake Windermere, especially the village of Sirendale. On paper, it was a harmless fishing village—but in reality, it was a den of sin, corruption, and secrets. Everyone who lived around the lake grew up with the rules:
Don’t go near Sirendale, or you’ll lose your way.
Don’t go near the palace, or you’ll lose weeks of time.
Don’t go near the royals, or you’ll lose your mind.
If Kimber had been at the palace ... and if the them she kept talking about were the siren royals ... Celeste blinked furiously, telling herself it was fine, she’d get her friend help, and they’d find a way to get Kimber through this.
But everyone knew that once the sirens had their way, played their games, and banished someone from the palace, it was only a matter of time before their victim’s mind shattered for good. To have been compelled every second of every day for so long, to be dazed by pleasure and the coveted sound of their masters’ voices, and then to be thrown out ... it was l
ike going through withdrawals. The human mind couldn’t handle it.
The siren mind could barely handle it—the royals were the most powerful, the most vicious and evil, the highest of high sirens, and they weren’t above playing games with their own kind. Lesser sirens were made into their twisted toys as readily as humans.
But they could survive it with their minds intact. People like Kimber...
There was a residential care facility full of their victims, their playthings. Yet they got away with shattering the minds of any humans unfortunate enough to cross their path, time and time again. No repercussions, no consequences for the royals. Not when they could compel away any problems that arose.
Celeste had always been sickened by their vile actions, but it had been a distant sickness. Something that had never touched her life and never would, because no one she knew was stupid enough to go anywhere near Sirendale.
Except ... Kimber had.
“Come on,” Celeste breathed, trying not to panic. “Let’s get inside. I’ll ... I’ll call Dr. Vasquez.”
Kimber didn’t even react as Celeste pulled her to her feet, her eyes glassy as she mumbled, “I should be there, I should be with them...”
Celeste sat Kimber down on her sofa and quickly closed the door to her flat, her heart pounding as Kimber stared into space, sobs shaking her body as she pleaded to be taken to the palace. Except ... she’d got here somehow, hadn’t she? Had one of the royals left her on Celeste’s doorstep so Kimber would get help, because they’d known her best friend lived here? The idea of a siren knowing her address made a chill shoot down Celeste’s spine, but anger hardened inside her, too, as she went in search of her phone.
Maybe Kimber had brought herself here, driven by some scrap of self-preservation buried deep down.
That idea was less chilling, so Celeste chose to believe it.
Phone in hand, she rifled through a drawer full of takeaway menus and taxi business cards, coming up with one of the white leaflets that had been put through her door every year for as long as she could remember—and through the letterbox of her mum and dad’s house when she was young. It was a flyer for the care home where people went to recover from compulsion disease, run by Dr Vasquez, the daughter of the Dr Vasquez who’d set the place up in the eighties.
Celeste’s hand shook as she punched the number into her phone and pressed call, bringing it to her ear and frantically thinking of how to explain about Kimber.
“Brighter Days Care Home and Rehabilitation Center,” a chipper voice greeted, sending Celeste’s heartbeat into sprint proportions. “How can I help—advice or intervention?”
“Um,” Celeste said, swallowing. “Intervention, I think? My friend, she’s ... I think she’s been compelled.”
“Oh, dear,” the woman breathed, sounding deflated. They mostly got calls for advice, then, if the woman sounded so surprised to be taken up on the ‘intervention’ offer. “Alright, love, give me your address and I’ll send someone ‘round to help. Is she there with you?”
“Yeah,” Celeste said quietly, glancing over at Kimber. “She’s sat on my sofa, just ... staring. And rambling...”
The operator sighed sadly. “Just keep talking to her—hearing your voice will be a comfort to her. And ... make sure she doesn’t hurt herself, alright? People with compulsion disease can be dangerous to themselves.”
“Right,” Celeste exhaled, and blurted, “This isn’t like her at all. She’s never been anywhere near Sirendale before, she’s an accountant for god’s sake, she’s smart...”
“All it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, love,” the woman on the other end said sympathetically. “There’s a doctor on her way to you now. Call back if you need anything before she gets there.”
“Thanks,” Celeste said numbly, listening to the line go dead. She lowered the phone, staring at the carpet under her feet and struggling to process. Kimber had been taken by the sirens and Celeste hadn’t even noticed.
Kimber had told her she was on holiday in fucking Paris. She’d lied. To be with them? Or because they’d told her to lie?
Celeste ground her teeth, growing angrier and angrier the more she thought about it. She knew what would happen. Kimber would go to Brighter Days, she’d be cared for, maybe she’d recover, maybe she never would ... and the siren royals would go unpunished.
“Kim?” Celeste asked, sitting beside her friend on the sofa and hesitantly touching her arm.
“I need to go back,” Kimber said desperately, her gaze shooting to Celeste’s. “Please help me, I need to go, I need to be with the royals...”
“Alright.” Celeste put her arms around Kimber and hugged her close, horrified and stunned and blazing mad all at the same time. “I’ll get you help. I promise, Kim.”
Kimber seemed to relax at that, and Celeste took it as a positive sign, that she knew she needed help to overcome the compulsion. But she could just as easily have thought Celeste meant help to get her to the palace.
“How did this happen?” she breathed after a long silence, Celeste’s mind spinning. But Kimber didn’t respond, and a knock at the door drew her away.
Dr Vasquez herself stood on the doorstep in a white blouse rolled up to the elbows and black trousers, her inky hair tied up in a bun. “You did the right thing by calling us,” she said, smiling sympathetically at Celeste when she froze, the doorknob still in her hand. She’d been expecting a doctor, not the woman who ran the whole bloody thing.
“Um,” Celeste said, swallowing the saliva pooled in her mouth. “Thanks for coming. Kim’s over there.”
Dr Vasquez approached Kimber slowly, a pleasant smile on her face but her eyes sharp, noting everything as Kim stared and shivered and ranted.
“Can you help her?” Celeste breathed, a pit in her stomach.
“I need to get to the palace,” Kimber said urgently, staring up at them. “I need to be with them, can you help me?”
Dr Vasquez gave Kimber a soft smile and patted her arm, nodding at Celeste. “I can help her.”
“If you need me to provide a statement for the police—” Celeste began, but Dr Vasquez cut her off with a sad sigh.
“It won’t go anywhere. They never do.”
Celeste stared at the doctor, both terrified and furious. “So they ... they just get away with it? My best friend’s like this, and they just get away with it?”
Dr Vasquez shrugged, a defeatist gesture. Whatever fight had prompted her to follow in her father's footsteps and rehabilitate compulsion disease patients had clearly long faded. But Celeste’s outrage was newly forged and growing by the second. “I’ve treated sixty-two people with compulsion disease so far,” Dr Vasquez said, “and not a single one of those has been taken to trial. I’ve forwarded countless reports to the police, even to our local MPs, but they always just ... vanish.”
Celeste shook her head hard, gritting her teeth. “They can’t get away with this.”
Dr Vasquez gave her that sad, pitying look again. “They can’t be stopped. Believe me, I’ve tried.” She took a phone from her pocket and fired off a text. “I’ve asked a colleague to help me get ... Kim, was it? ... into the car. He’ll be here in a minute.”
“Kimber,” Celeste said automatically, her thoughts a seething whirlwind.
Kimber was broken. And the sirens got to carry on with their evil lives while Kimber’s ground to a halt. She couldn’t go into work like this. What happened to her career? What happened to everything she’d built for herself? Did that just wither away while she babbled and pleaded to return to Windermere Palace? And Celeste was supposed to allow that injustice?
Hatred burst in Celeste’s chest, growing as she watched Dr Vasquez and the male nurse who arrived a minute later get Kimber, rambling and shaking, into the car that would take her to Brighter Days.
“We’ve got your number,” Dr Vasquez said with a compassionate smile on her face. “I’ll call you when we’ve got her settled in a room, and you can come visit he
r tomorrow. Do you know her next of kin?”
Celeste shrugged uselessly. “Her mum and dad passed away five years ago. Car crash. And her sister lives in Benidorm now. I think ... I think I’m her next of kin?”
“Alright.” Dr Vasquez squeezed Celeste’s shoulder. “I’ll need you to come in and sign a few papers, giving us official permission to care for her.”
“Okay.”
“Talk to you soon,” Dr Vasquez said, and got into the car.
Watching Kimber being driven away to the only place that could help put her fractured mind back together again—if that was even possible—the kernel of hate in Celeste’s chest expanded until her whole heart was covered in seething, malicious black.
Kimber was broken, ruined by the siren royals of Windermere Palace, and what? No police investigation. No trial. No imprisonment and life sentence. Nothing. They got to go on and hurt someone else the way they’d hurt Kimber. They might even have a new victim right now.
“No,” Celeste hissed aloud, still on her doorstep, still staring into the dark night, freezing cold but with scalding hate rushing through her blood to keep her warm. “No.”
There had to be a way to make them pay.
There had to be.
Kimber couldn’t get revenge for what they’d done to her, but Celeste could.
Stood there, shaking with rage, she came up with an idea. First things first, she needed a resistance charm. And to get a message to Benji. If she was going to do this, she’d need her brother’s help. Even in prison, he could pull enough strings to get her what she needed. She could ask her mum, who’d be able to get Celeste what she needed within the hour, but the matriarch of their family was still in hiding for a heist gone wrong. But Benji could help her find a way into the palace.
If no one outside had been able to bring the sirens down ... Celeste would find a way inside.
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