A new story comes out of Innatraea every season. The series is a women-centered dark fantasy epic rooted in tree mythology, full of matriarchal kingdoms, constructed languages, and mythical creatures, and every short story is free to read. They sit outside the main series and go where the books haven’t been yet.
You’ll meet women warriors and goddesses, dryads and nymphs, and Sacred Folk, with blood magic, dragon prophecy, ritual scars, falconry, knighthood, confession, forbidden love, and chosen family along the way. The cultures draw on Cherokee, Armenian, Slavic, Norse, Japanese, Etruscan, Mexican, Aztec, Turkish, Arabic, Sephardic, Romani, and Bedouin traditions, reimagined as the kingdoms of Innatraea.
Scent of Innocence
In the shadowed depths of the Tanglewood, Leyja, a predatory Tangle Nymph, stalks a young Danae traveler whose untouched innocence carries a rare and irresistible scent. Tangle Nymphs feed not on innocence itself, but on the sweet, devastating moment of its corruption. When a brutal ambush by human mercenaries threatens to shatter her prey’s soul through unrefined violence, Leyja intervenes to preserve her rare harvest.
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Koliada
During a Romani-inspired Danae winter festival, Koliada follows Elwin—a time-conscious traveler known as the “farm boy”—and his long-time companion, Myrtle. As music and bonfire light fill the camp, Elwin stands watch over a young woman who will endure heartbreak before she gives birth to his future sister. He can’t change the timeline. He can only watch her start down a painful road, knowing exactly where it leads.
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Sakturia
During Kinrai’s Sakturia—the Seylan Festival of Water and Light, drawn from Japanese and Etruscan cultural traditions—Sule, an Aisna, receives a covert visit through a secret passage from her childhood friend Tilva, who underwent a dramatic ascension and permanent glamour to become their Tanati. Over a game of Shatranj, the two trade memories of their years on the streets and of Sule’s brother Armis, and Sule glimpses what leadership has cost the girl beneath Tilva’s ritual scars and tattoos.
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Vardavar
In Mayrik Lerr during Sophene’s festival—rooted in Armenian mythology and tradition—Vardavar: Festival of Rose and Water centers on Princess Taline Baghdasaryan experiencing her first festival without royal supervision. With her faithful retainer Gurgen at her side, the day turns from political maneuvering to festival joy. Then a fortune-teller lays The Lovers and The Dragon side by side, and an unsettling brush with a dragon stone (vishapakar) pulls Taline into a vision of what’s coming for her.
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Praznik na Vrani
During Keivan’s week-long Praznik na Vrani (Feast of Crows) in Sumadusi forest—steeped in Slavic pagan tradition—Noma, a Vesterka, or mistress of death, grieves the passing of her father—the shunned blood-magician Kashchei. Abandoned by her sisters due to her father’s blasphemous legacy, Noma’s solitary grief hardens into dark resolve when an encounter with a Katyogei, a mythical creature of the ancient forests, draws her closer to the Ciklusot. Meanwhile, Sovniya, one of the nine Vesterka Carici, receives a terrifying prophetic vision of Noma drowning their people in a sea of blood magic and dark power.
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Geohhol
In the Norse-inspired lands of Nordria during midwinter, Geohhol: Festival of Northern Lights follows Tobias, an outsider adopted into a harsh Viking-like clan, who faces an impossible choice as his father dies and his cruel brother Hakon prepares to claim power. Unable to stomach the brutality of his adopted kin or find a true home, Tobias leaves, abandoning his closest friend, Ayla. Years later, surviving alone in the frozen wilderness during Geohhol, Ayla encounters a wounded bear cub—and in its gentleness, finds a reason to stay.
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Tzipcanu
Spanning two eras on the tropical island of Sceotan—a culture rich with Mexican-inspired traditions, bonsai gardens, and coffee—Tzipcanu (Bird Festival) follows the long life of Sister Aranya “Mother” Jimaiyo, one of the three oldest Weavers on Innatraea. In her rooftop garden Nochalu, Mother Jimaiyo tends a centuries-old bonsai tree Pilutzi Ghani, watches native sparrows, and nurtures an open household of orphans and elders. Over a century later, during the annual bird festival, Weaver Taia watches from an inn balcony as this matriarch moves through Sceotan’s streets—and sees the true scope of her authority: a woman who brought the entire island to a peaceful standstill to protect her people from unjust tax laws.
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Gogi Asherah
In the golden, windswept grass of Ayuwasi during Gogi Asherah, or Summer of Asherah, Sequoyah, a storyteller of the Cherokee-inspired Ta’al people, helps plant the traditional Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) while remembering his warrior wife, Inola, a Whip Master of the Shali’far. When news of an ambush reaches the tribe, Sequoyah and his young daughter Dyani are left to carry what remains. Years later, Dyani becomes a Soqu—a horse-spirit guardian in the Native American tradition—bonding with a wild, untamable stallion named Adsila (Fire), and finding in the thunder of hooves what her mother left her.
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Tlailli Mahuizotl
In the Mesoamerican-inspired stone city of Teokahl during Tlailli Mahuizotl, or Celebration of Pain, Colel, a legendary Yn’Tuac Kobaal and warrior mother, arrives at the great pyramid of Tlasaqen. She survived captivity, tragic violence, and harsh jungle exile to raise four sons and earn deep honor among her people. Now, after standing up to disrespect in the markets, she comes face to face with the Aztec-rooted mother goddess Ixchel—and refuses to kneel. Ixchel honors her for it, and gives her a task: unite the rival tribes of Amng’khor before the coming war reaches them.
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Lumresca
In a freezing chapel in Porto de la Luce during the winter solstice festival of Lumresca, Legatus Albrecht Ludheim, a battle-weary knight of the Ordini Soli Obliti, kneels before Perpetua, a Daughter of Jhoras with whom he shares a painful, forbidden past. Through the solemn, three-part ritual of Jhorian penance—involving ceremonial candles, burning wax, and sacred oils—Albrecht confesses his lingering, unrequited love for Perpetua, his killing of allied Aedonian soldiers to save an innocent Cathyoran woman and child, and his growing crisis of faith and knighthood.
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Bahar Atesi
In Arslan Meydani, the Lion’s Square, ten years before present events, during Bahar Atesi, the Festival of Spring Fire, two lives cross paths in the Turkish and Arabic-inspired city of Tursim. Brother Deniz, a Qin of the Konsey using his Weaver’s Ring (Cevreleme) to suppress all emotion, discovers an eight-year-old boy named Kemal who possesses rare, untrained magic, and sets a long-term plan into motion. Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Elif wanders the festival grieving the loss of her father and her mother’s voluntary pilgrimage to the Great Tree Nawia. Refusing to yield to forced marriage or despair, Elif finds her resolve outside a female carpet weaver’s shop—and chooses her own road.
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Saqr Waqt
In the deep desert during Saqr Waqt, The Falcon’s Time, Nedjima, a khunoni and woman falconer of the Bedouin-inspired Banat as-Saqr, prepares to select a new bird alongside her husband, Rashan. It has been a grueling mourning year since her beloved falcon Shahida flew off toward the mysterious Eighth Road. Mid-festival, under a windless sky, Shahida impossibly descends on a phantom current and lands on Nedjima’s gloved wrist. All her life, Nedjima has believed in the Eighth Walker (al-Mashi ath-Thamin). Now she knows.
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Z’ahkron de la Kosecha
In the golden plains of Ayuwasi during Z’ahkron de la Kosecha, Memory of the Harvest, Matriarch Najwa and her Seylan husband, Kulric, gather with their tribe, the Sephardic-inspired Zimsway Rinowhn, to harvest sacred haze flower, La Kosecha Kadosh. Najwa carries the grief of her mother Chaya’s long-ago disappearance and the stolen family Zuniga stone—which left her with an empty, cold relic. During the ceremonial smoking of haze flower, Najwa chooses to seed her cold stone with memories of love, community, and the life she has built—so the next woman who holds it will not inherit emptiness.
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