Description

"Want is not a crime. Ask at the door."

When storms roll in over Savannah, the Crown's answer is "Eminent Calm"—gleaming serenity devices and velvet-voiced decrees that sedate a city one breath at a time. Arden Keene has a different gospel: post consent where the lungs begin and make power ask out loud.

From a boiler-room kitchen turned war room, Arden and her crew—Nettie with the foam boards, Tamsin with the brine sprayer, a tide clerk who takes notes for the river—teach neighborhoods to salt thresholds and say no at the door. It works…which puts them in the crosshairs of the Queen of Dawn's envoys, a charming criminal named Crow, and a rule-bound Warrant Officer who was bred to enforce obedience and ends up seconded to Arden's cause.

Then there's Ronan Vex—dangerous, tender, legally complicated—whose magic runs on bonds that only count if both of them say yes. As hurricanes, curfews, and gilded "quiet chapels" push the city toward kneeling, Arden and Ronan build a different kind of spell: kitchens over chapels, thresholds over thrones, consent over convenience.

To win, they'll have to adopt the city's forgotten drains, out-argue royal lawyers in open court, and turn a billboard into a battle cry. Law will be rewritten in chalk, salt, and kisses that always, always ask.

KEPT is a modern fantasy of civic rebellion and adult romance—sharp, sweaty, and sincere—about what happens when a city learns to keep itself and two people learn to keep each other.

Heat level: explicit (18+). Standalone arc; series continues in Book Two.