A Ruin of Roses: Deliciously Dark Fairytales, Book 1

Book one in the steamy Deliciously Dark Fairytales series, the BookTok bestselling dark romantasy reimagining of Beauty and the Beast where monsters lurk in the forest . . . and they might just take a bite.

I could save him, but he would ruin me.

The beast.
The creature that stalks the forbidden wood.
The dragon prince.
He has suffered a fate worse than death. We all have. A curse put upon us by the mad king.

We are a kingdom locked in time. Shifters unable to feel our animals. Stuck here by a deal between the late king and a demon who seeks our destruction.

The only one keeping this kingdom alive is Nyfain, the golden prince to a stolen throne. The last dragon shifter.
He’s our hope.
He’s my nightmare.

When he catches me trespassing in the forbidden wood, he doesn’t punish me with death, as he’s entitled to.
He takes me, instead. Forces me back to the castle as his prisoner. Seeks to use me.

Apparently, I can save him. I can save the whole forgotten kingdom, locked away by the demon king’s power.
But it would mean taming the monster beneath his skin. It would mean giving myself to him.
It would mean my ruin.

This is a dark and spicy Beauty and the Beast retelling featuring an anti-hero, a strong heroine, and a humorous supporting cast. This is an enemies-to-lovers and possible fated mates story suitable for 18+.
It’s the first of four books, ending on a cliffhanger.

K.F. Breene is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and fantasy novels. With over four million books sold, when she’s not penning stories about magic and what goes bump in the night, she’s sipping wine and planning shenanigans. She lives in Northern California with her husband, two children, and an out-of-work treadmill.

A Ruin of Roses, the first installment in K.F. Breene's Deliciously Dark Fairytales series, offers a bold, spicy, and fiercely modern reimagining of the classic Beauty and the Beast trope. Set in the decaying kingdom of Wyvern, the story plunges readers into a world trapped in a nightmare of time and sickness. Sixteen years prior, a foolish and desperate deal struck between a grief-stricken Mad King and a malevolent Demon King resulted in a devastating curse. This dark magic stripped the kingdom's shifter population of their ability to connect with their inner animals, unleashed a horde of bloodthirsty demons upon the land, and infected the common villagers with a slow, lethal sickness. While the elite within the royal castle remain frozen in time, indulging in immortal debauchery, the villagers outside the walls are left to wither and die, living in perpetual fear of the encroaching darkness.

At the heart of this bleak world is Finley Mosgrove, a resilient, twenty-three-year-old commoner who carries the weight of her family’s survival on her shoulders. Uninterested in the traditional, submissive roles expected of women in her village, Finley is fiercely practical, sarcastic, and driven by a singular purpose: keeping her ailing father alive. To do this, she regularly risks her life by sneaking into the treacherous Forbidden Wood. Under the light of the moon, she harvests everlass, a rare magical plant that she skillfully brews into a tonic to hold the curse’s sickness at bay. The woods are teeming with demonic predators, but Finley’s desperation outweighs her fear, even though she knows the territory is fiercely guarded by a legendary, golden-eyed monster known only as the Beast.

Finley’s luck inevitably runs out when the Beast catches her in the act of poaching the precious everlass. Instead of tearing her apart, as the terrifying rumors suggest he might, the imposing creature issues a terrifying ultimatum. To spare her family from his wrath, Finley must leave her home and become his permanent prisoner. She is dragged into the heart of the cursed castle, a place where the air is thick with dark magic, demons roam the shadows, and the immortal inhabitants engage in endless, hedonistic parties to stave off their creeping madness. The stark contrast between Finley’s impoverished, desperate life and the castle’s twisted opulence sets the stage for her grueling captivity.

The dynamic between Finley and her captor is fraught with intense friction from the very beginning. The Beast is soon revealed to be Nyfain, the cursed dragon prince and the last surviving royal of Wyvern. Scarred, surly, and burdened with the impossible task of single-handedly holding back the demon tides, Nyfain is a formidable anti-hero. He locks Finley in a high tower room, strictly forbidding her from wandering the castle at night when the demonic presence is at its most lethal. However, Finley is not a passive captive. She constantly challenges his authority, leading to explosive arguments that mask a simmering, undeniable physical attraction between them.

This proximity to Nyfain triggers something completely unexpected within Finley. For the first time in her life, she begins to feel the stirrings of her own inner animal—a shifter side that the curse had suppressed since her childhood. This primal awakening intensifies her connection to the dragon prince, blurring the lines between hatred, captivity, and a desperate, magnetic desire. As she slowly adjusts to life in the castle, she also befriends some of its eccentric inhabitants, like the flamboyant demon Hadriel. Through these interactions, she learns that the castle is bound by strict magical rules; anyone who attempts to reveal the deeper secrets of the curse to her is instantly choked by a magical gag.

Driven by her restless curiosity and a refusal to be kept in the dark, Finley begins to explore her gilded cage. Her wanderings eventually lead her to a beautiful, walled-off garden that once belonged to the former queen. It is within this private sanctuary that the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place for Finley. She discovers a rosebush growing from the floor, and when Nyfain suddenly arrives, she realizes with staggering clarity that her monstrous captor is the very same golden dragon prince she remembers soaring through the skies when she was a little girl. Overwhelmed by the revelation of his true identity and the suffocating weight of the secrets he has kept from her, Finley feels a profound sense of betrayal and panic.

Desperate to reclaim her freedom and escape the tangled web of the castle, Finley makes a reckless dash back into the terrifying depths of the Forbidden Wood. Her escape attempt quickly turns disastrous when she is ambushed by the Fah Rahlen, grotesque and highly venomous skeletal creatures spawned by the Demon King. Just as the monsters close in for the kill, Nyfain arrives in a blind, protective fury. He slaughters the creatures and saves Finley’s life, but in the chaos of the battle, he is slashed by their toxic claws, absorbing a dose of poison that brings the invincible dragon prince to his knees.

Refusing to let the man who just saved her die, a frantic Finley drags the weakened Nyfain back to her humble village home. Working alongside her siblings, she utilizes her deep knowledge of the everlass plant to draw the demonic poison from his veins. As Nyfain slowly recovers in her small home, a tender, grounding bond begins to form between the brooding prince and Finley’s family. However, Nyfain is painfully aware that his continued presence paints a massive target on their backs. In a heartbreaking and desperate act of protection, he serves the family a powerfully drugged tea. As Finley slips into a forced sleep, Nyfain returns to the Forbidden Wood alone, determined to face the wrath of the demons and leaving Finley devastated in the book's gripping cliffhanger.