Love-Locked Hearts is a novelette of 15,400 words set in a frost-bitten medieval fantasy burgh where magic is brewed in candle shops and love can be bottled, charged, and sold in time for Valentine's. Blending medieval romantasy, witch romance, and enemies-to-lovers tension, it follows a lonely spellmaker and the guarded soldier she hires to resist her love magic. With forced proximity, slow-burn yearning, a Valentine's market, and a binding spell that can’t be undone, this steamy, atmospheric Valentine's tale is perfect for readers who crave magical chemistry and a love that neither party planned to feel.

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Elina is a candle-maker and spell-wright who has spent the winter perfecting a love spell that will make even the coldest heart yield. With Valentine's approaching and her shop depending on the coin it will bring, she needs to test it on someone who will truly resist—someone whose refusal will reveal the flaw in her craft. On Mariposa's advice, she posts an advertisement for paid evening work, discretion assured, and the last person she expects to answer is Saverio, a top guard with blood on his armor and a reputation for silence, discipline, and a heart made of stone.

He agrees to stand in a frozen clearing while she casts love magic at him and he refuses every one. Night after night, he deflects her spells with shield and sword, barely winded, while the rebounded magic returns to Elina as warm sparks she dismisses as exertion. But each return binds her to him a little more, and soon she’s waiting for him in her shop, watching the door, wanting what she can’t name. When she finally reads her grandmother's spell book, she learns the truth: a deflected love spell doesn’t fail—it binds the caster to the one who deflected it, deeper with every return, and it can’t be lifted.

What she doesn’t know is whether the spells have done something to Saverio too. He keeps coming back. He keeps his face still. And when she gives him a jar of honey and he smiles—unguarded, just for her—she realizes she’s in love with a man she hired to reject her. Valentine's Day brings a castle feast, a confession, and a night in his quarters among sleeping songbirds. But if the binding is real, is his desire his own? And if it isn’t, can she bear to know?

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This is a Valentine's romantasy for readers who love slow-burn magic with a witchy, sensory edge—beeswax and honey, frost and iron, rose-red wax and crushed rosemary. It delivers forced proximity, magical binding, enemies-to-lovers heat, and the ache of wanting someone who seems immune to you. With a heroine who sells love for Valentine's but can’t keep it, and a hero whose stillness hides everything, Love-Locked Hearts makes desire feel like a spell you can’t uncast. Miss it, and you will miss the Valentine's romance that made magic itself fall in love. 

Read Online:

• Free Sample

• Love-locked Hearts. (Complete)