The Crown of Moonlight
Martina Boone
(The Five Crowns, #1)
Publication date: November 11th 2025
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance
She’s the Highlander who saves his life with forbidden magic. He’s the immortal stranger who falls first—one healing touch, one fierce kindness at a time.
A romantic fantasy inspired by Scottish history, where the land itself is magic and chooses a woman as its champion.
Flora Domhnall is the last of her line: a healer, a strategist, her clan’s only defence in a war neither side can win. When she finds a dying immortal warrior in her woods, saving him is a terrible risk. But if he dies on her land, her clan will pay the price.
Her choice binds her fate to his.
Chyr has spent four centuries chained by the oaths carved into his flesh—oaths that read his every thought. Violence and honour are all he knows, and Flora’s brave, impossible mercy breaks him open.
Hunted across the burning Highlands, they can rely only on each other. Their longing grows with every mile they share a saddle, every sacrifice made in silence, and every night they guard each other in the dark.
He’s hopelessly fallen. She’s fighting not to fall.
Then the ancient sovereignty magic of the Cailleach Queens awakens in Flora—and marks her as something the world hasn’t seen in four hundred years.
And Chyr’s oaths may demand he destroy the one person he can’t bear to lose.
For her, he’ll try to break his oaths. Even if it kills him.
From award-winning author Martina Boone, The Crown of Moonlight is a mythic Celtic romantasy perfect for readers who love the haunting historical romance of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the soul-deep yearning of Rebecca Ross, and the dark, aching magic of Rachel Gillig’s One Dark Window. The first book in a sweeping series about ancient crowns, impossible oaths, and a love that must survive betrayal, war, and the gods themselves.
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EXCERPT:
Flora
My knees shake as I crouch beside the nearest Ever, and a hot flush of magic ripples across my skin. More magic than I’ve ever felt. But that’s not the only shock. Although the ancient tales talk about the beauty of the Everfolk, seeing it in front of me makes my breath catch.
The Ever is handsome in a way that explains the warnings in the ancient stories—the blinding, dangerous sort of beauty that’s said to make humans lose their will and descend into madness. His features are too eerily perfect, his black hair has the gleam of raven’s wings, and the blue eyes that look unseeingly into the sky catch the light like layers of stained glass, revealing more colours the deeper I look.
His sightless stare unnerves me, and I brush my fingers across his lids to close them. The skin is still warm. I flinch from the contact, and my hand grazes a pale-blue crystal set in a ring on his right hand.
A jolt of pure power jars me as I touch it—so hot and bright that it pulls an answering flare from the ember of magic that burns inside me. Snatching my hand away, I wait for the sensation to ebb. But I miss it when it’s gone. My magic misses it, which makes no sense since my magic isn’t Ever magic. Careful not to touch the ring again, I bend closer to examine the crystal set within it. There’s movement inside, gold threads of magic dancing like lightning behind a thin haze of cloud.
The movement is mesmerising, holding me captive a moment too long after Ari snorts and stomps his foot. By the time the thud and the jingling of his bridle finally register, his muscles are braced as he uses his back to pull harder against the reins that tie him to the tree.
Then a twig snaps somewhere close. Behind me? To the left?
I spin around, searching. But there’s nothing. No one.
Well, I refuse to play this game.
“Who’s there? Come out and show yourself instead of hiding like a coward.”
The Wood falls unnaturally still. Then shadows stir beneath an oak tree to my left.
“I know you’re there,” I say, gripping the dagger tighter.
A voice answers me from the shadows. “Careful, little one. Taunt the things you fear, and you might just prove you were right to be afraid.”
The voice is male—slow and resonant, pitched between a growl and a cat’s deep purr. A predator’s voice, claws barely sheathed.
A shiver of awareness ripples down my spine. I draw on the cool, gritty power of the earth and fuse it with the fire that burns inside me. Needles of magic rake through bone and tissue as I force it outward, pouring it into the dagger. The blade groans, lengthening and thickening until it becomes a perfect replica of my father’s sword and rests cold, heavy, and steadying within my grasp.
An Ever steps forward, his figure cloaked in gloom, footsteps whispering over the frost-crusted moss. He’s larger than the bodies behind me seemed, taller and broader, his features carved in bold strokes beneath gilded hair that’s tied half-up in a warrior’s knot and reveals a widow’s peak. He looks gaunt, worn down, though power and command still radiate from him. He’s every bit as beautiful as the others—and devastatingly male.
He watches me with a faint, treacherous smile. “You can put that illusion away,” he says. “You’re lucky I didn’t mistake it for a threat.”
“The sword is no illusion,” I say, “and the threat is no mistake.”
Author Bio:
Martina Boone is the award-winning author of romantic fiction set in magical places. Her books blend lush writing, strong heroines, wounded heroes, atmospheric landscapes, history, folklore, family secrets, and magic woven through the ordinary world. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found traveling, reading, studying history and folklore, wrangling wildflower meadows, or playing with Shetland Sheepdogs and tuxedo cats.
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