THE GOD BELOW

The dead keep their bargains. She intended to keep hers.

Zorya has spent eight years hunting the creatures that cross the boundary between
worlds. She is good at her work, precise about its costs, and not given to sentiment.
When her brother is killed crossing into the land of the dead, she crosses after him.

The price of entry is a year's service to the god who holds those borders.

Veles is old in the way that territory is old - certain of itself, patient, and
accustomed to receiving exactly what he is owed. He expects a border hunter who will
complete her contract and go home. What he does not expect is someone who asks the
right questions, refuses to be managed, and begins, very slowly, to change the shape
of what he thought he wanted.

Zorya does not fall. She considers. She decides.

Over twelve months in the land of the dead, between the archive and the courtyard
and the long working silences of two people who respect the same things, something
accumulates that has no name in her language - and one in his.

The contract has an end date. What she feels does not.

A slow-burn fantasy romance set in the mythological world of Slavic folklore.
88,000 words. Standalone with series potential. Closed door.

Readers who love: competent heroines who earn the love story, morally complex gods
who tell the truth badly, and endings that feel chosen rather than inevitable.