Three Words Cursed

Eighteen-year-old Haven doesn’t remember life before the Surge. Before electricity was zapped to near non-existence. Before families sold their children and big cities became ghost towns. Before she met her best friend Cricket, the 6’10” boy she rescued from a freak show. After spending a year as the McCall circus’s star dancer, Haven is blindsided when her employer sells her to a brothel. Refusing to be sold into prostitution, she hatches an escape plan, but after her final show, she and Cricket are interrupted mid-escape by an intoxicated assassin named Breck. He is everything Haven fears about the outside world - dangerous, cold, and yet incredibly charming. But Breck’s arrival ends with a trail of blood and their faces plastered on WANTED posters. Haven agrees to leave under his protection on one condition - Cricket goes too - and because Breck can’t fight his burning infatuation with Haven, he agrees. Hopping trains and hiding out in a misfit circus wasn’t the life she’d envisioned, but as Breck’s hard exterior softens and Cricket’s smile is no longer painted, Haven finally realizes how badly she wants to be free and in control of her own life. With the brothel and McCall’s investors closing in on them, Haven must fight for what she wants - but the price for freedom is greater than she ever imagined.