Stronghold

Dustin Grant’s property along the Río Grande was supposed to be a sanctuary.

A place for magical beings with nowhere else to go. A place without cages, classifications, recovery orders, or anyone deciding that a living being was an asset to be contained.

Then the people who built their power on lines drawn across maps, unbending regulations, and boundary wards found it.

Dusty has a djinn at his side, a growing family of magical kin under his roof, and a bad habit of standing between powerful institutions and the people they want to control. That has made him a problem for WARD—the Wish Allocation and Resource Directorate—an enforcement arm of the Bureau of Mundane-Fae Relations, and for the shadowy cabal behind all the paperwork: the Arcane Dominion.

Now the Dominion wants to tear apart their sanctuary—Casa Río Espíritu.

But the land around the house has memories older than either nation drawn on the maps. Beneath the river, the clay, and the caliche sleeps a presence that remembers what was stolen, diverted, buried, and forgotten. When the Dominion comes, Nugget will have to decide what she is—and what she is willing to become to protect the people who gave her a home.

The caliche and the river don’t recognize the line on the map.

Neither does the magic rising beneath them.

Because Casa Río Espíritu is no longer just a sanctuary.

It is their stronghold.