Spellcraft and Stubborn Hearts

This ward teacher has the emotional availability of a locked door.

It’s is the magically inconvenient anti meet-cute you didn’t see coming…

Lark Mercer has always been a little too much in the best possible way. Too bright, too curious, too willing to experiment with magic that doesn’t always behave. As a resonant creative spellmaking teacher, she encourages her students to push boundaries. Unfortunately, one of her own experiments destabilizes a set of ancient wards and turns her classroom into a living, breathing magical disaster before second period.

Not ideal.

Enter Adrian Vale, the new ward teacher. Quiet. Controlled. Intensely private. Rumor has it he was sent by the Agency of Magical Education, which means one thing for a school full of magical misfit middle schoolers like theirs.

Inspection. Evaluation. Possible shutdown.

Adrian restores the wards with unnerving precision, pulls Lark out of the chaos before it consumes her, and then makes it very clear he would prefer she stay far away from him and his work.

Charming.

Adrian has spent years maintaining control over his magic, his past, and his carefully constructed distance from others. The last thing he needs is a reckless, relentlessly optimistic teacher poking at both his wards and his patience. But Lark has never met a problem she did not want to solve, and Adrian Vale feels very much like one.

How is a man determined to keep everything contained supposed to handle a woman who believes magic is meant to be felt, tested, and occasionally broken? And what happens when the person who threatens to unravel everything might also be the one who makes it worth risking?

Spells & Stubborn Hearts is a cozy, magic-laced romance about precarious wards, precarious hearts, and the danger of letting the wrong person get just close enough to change everything. Available Summer 2026.