A Star-Cursed Heart - Softcover

Mare, Annie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593817508 ISBN 13: 9780593817506

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Two women are cursed to be mortal enemies, despite their love for each other, in this queer, fantastical novel by Annie Mare.

In the lead-up to the Salem witch trials, a desperate man made a deal with the devil—a deal that would drag two families down with him. Now, over 400 years later, the Steadfasts and the Prynnes remain caught in a curse that sentences both families to an existence of rigid rules, torturous consequences, and half-lives.

Lucy Prynne and Ashes Steadfast are the latest to take on the mantle of this centuries-old deal: Lucy, born to try to reap the souls of the hopeful; and Ashes, born to stop Lucy, no matter the cost. But before they inherited their respective curses, it sure felt like Ash’s purpose was Lucy. Her best friend, her closest confidant, her true love. 

Ash knows the rules. She keeps her head down, her emotions in check, and she fights Lucy, no matter the personal cost. They are doomed to an incessant battle between good and bad, self-righteous and carnal. 

Or so Ash thinks. But when she resists her instincts to fight Lucy and finally starts to fight the curse instead, she realizes there might just be a way to end this once and for all. If not in this timeline, then the next. As generational secrets begin to unravel, Ashes and Lucy join forces against the true threat that has haunted their families for centuries, even if it costs them their lives—and their love.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Annie Mare (she/they) writes queer contemporary young adult romance and cowrites queer romance and mysteries with her wife, Ruthie Knox. Mare lives with her wife, two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish, one cat, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I.

Hector's Tavern

The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The gravel surface of the parking lot clawed her cheek open on impact, and for a moment all she felt was the sting. Ashes Steadfast pulled her knees into her chest and gave herself one self-pitying second to breathe. Breathing was a good way to figure out if she'd fractured a rib.

Lucy stood six feet away with her short whisper of a dress blowing against her legs in the January wind. She wasn't cold. The devil didn't get cold. Or tired. Lucy Prynne didn't have a soul to vigilantly defend against temptation. When she tilted her head to look at Ash curled up on the ground, her eyes didn't need to be guarded. Lucy's eyes were knowing and kind, understanding and fascinated. Eyes that were easy to surrender to.

Ash had done it before. Once, she'd belonged to Lucy, and Lucy had belonged to her. Back when they were just girls and none of this seemed inevitable. Back when they believed their love could defeat a three-hundred-year-old bargain to balance good and evil.

Ash and Lucy's fights were one part metaphysical fisticuffs, one part ex-girlfriends who knew where the buttons were and how hard to push. The Prynnes, humanity's devils, tempted and reaped. The Steadfasts, dressed in unadorned black (hair shirt optional), tugged innocents back from the brink with a charming side of puritanical idioms too boring even to embroider on a pillow.

Powers may vary. Lucy's sneaky dropkick had sent Ash flying on more than one occasion. In addition to controlling the weather, she had a knack for conjuring seductive backdrops to unburden people of their souls. Ash, like all Steadfasts, had the super strength and the super knack for a guilt trip necessary to fight the devil.

Blood dripped from her chin, soaking the gravel. Her rib seemed okay. She knew her role. She wasn't interested in feeling her feelings.

"Lucy," she croaked.

"Ashes." Lucy always called her by her full name. No one else did. Footsteps crunched across the gravel, and then the illusion of her oldest friend filled her field of vision. Light brown hair in teetering stacks of tumbling curls. Those eyes. "You're still breathing."

Ash couldn't tell if this was an expression of disappointment or merely an observation. Instead of wondering, she made herself pay attention to the pinching sensation of drawing cold air into her lungs. She imagined the beat of her heart as slow and strong, easily moving steady pulls through her muscles. The longer it had been since they last met like this, the harder it got to keep her head in the game.

It had been a while. Months.

Focus on the fight, she scolded herself. Not the shape of Lucy's body under the thin, creamy silk of her dress. Not the rough fry of her voice that always sounded like she had just awoken to the welcome sight of an indulgent lover.

Lucy held out her hand to help Ash up. The pulse in her wrist was visible beneath a thin gold bracelet. Temptation. Evergreen.

There had been a time when Ash looked a lot more like the fallen than the savior. She wore colors, for example. Kissed girls (one girl). Felt the sweat bead at the back of her neck and gleam over her bare shoulders while she held an instrument under bright lights in front of dancing people hazed with smoke. Back then, she was unscarred and unbothered. She was in love. She had dreams. She had a future. She had Lucy.

Lucy. Not this apparition who didn't even feel the cold that seeped into Ash's bones.

Focus.

She grabbed Lucy's wrist, not her hand, never her hand, and forced the muscles in her hips and thighs to lurch her body upright. She kept her knees bent, her grip tight, until she had enough leverage to bring the other woman's forearm forcibly across her chest, turning her into a tidy missile that Ash grasped by the hips and tossed.

An enormous charge of golden light detonated from Lucy's body. It raced across the ground, illuminating the night, sparking the bulbs in the parking lot and drawing shadows from the dozen or so silent figures in black who stood in a solemn circle surrounding them. These were her Puritan ancestors, Ash had to assume, spectating on these fights to remind her of her duty.

It was a never-ending tug-of-war. If she let go of her end of the rope, the territory these forebears had paid for in violence would be forfeit. Her absence from the battle would feed a swell of lost, entitled souls. The balance that kept people safe would tip, knocking over the world.

Surrender was the only way to end it. If she died fighting, or Lucy did, the next paired set of Prynne and Steadfast descendants would just be tapped to take their places. The curse reset its players like bowling pins, frame after frame, forever.

She and Lucy had tried to break the pact with love. Total bust.

Ash had even tried to end it on her own, by running away to New York, but Lucy found her.

When she'd limped home last year from that failed escape attempt, she'd wondered if their fathers had the right idea. Don't fight. Instead, nurture a cold war of stasis. Circle each other with fingers on the trigger but the safety engaged. Never let the other out of your sight. Exchange defanged diplomacy and ignore the sweetness of blood at the back of the throat. But even this noble experiment had failed. Ash's father died, if only briefly, and the curse passed itself along.

Ash had come to the weary conclusion that the only choices this bargain offered were to fight or to give up and let the world go to ruin.

She wasn't ready to give up. Numb as she'd become, she still felt obligated to the innocent. The biggest dream Ash allowed herself these days was don't die. Not today. Not dying was no way to live, but she hadn't come up with anything better. If she survived tonight, she could look forward to waking up tomorrow and not dying. But if she gave herself an opportunity to feel her feelings, she might feel something dangerous, like hope.

She unzipped her black motorcycle jacket. The cold stung, though her underarms and the skin beneath her breasts were slick with sweat. "What's brought you here tonight, Luce?"

Panting, Lucy wrapped her arms around her middle and heaved herself to her side. "Such an incredibly existential question."

It wasn't. It was a practical question, one Ash needed the answer to in order to hold these meetups at bay. She hadn't been thinking of her lost love. She hadn't been thumbing through old photos or strolling over memories of the good years. She knew better than to indulge nostalgia. Any strong emotion called the devil to her door, which was why Ash kept her life as straight as a ruler.

She'd even told herself it wasn't Lucy when she'd felt the compulsion to come to Hector's Tavern tonight-that her body's insistence was only about how long it had been since she'd seen Hector and how much she'd been missing him lately. But she'd arrived to find the parking lot dark, the lights out except for a perfect golden circle. Inside it, a couple leaned against the front bumper of a cherry-red pickup truck. Drifting, swirling sparkles filled the air around them. As she strode closer, she could make out a handsome young man talking with both hands, his face lit up with more than the preternatural light around him, his words tumbling over themselves in his mesmerized excitement.

It wasn't exactly true that people were talked out of their souls. Once a person believed they could have anything they wanted, they would gladly talk the devil into taking it.

Free will was tricky as hell.

Ash had stood in the shadows, camouflaged by her black jacket, boots, and jeans (though the near-white blond braid that snaked over her...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593817508
• ISBN 13: 9780593817506
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 353
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: ACE; https://www.penguin.com/; ; Bachstelzenweg 10; Ibbenb?ren; 49479; Deutschland