About:
"That's what they do to people like us," her mother had whispered. "That's what fear makes them become."
Eleanor was seven the first time she watched a woman hang for witchcraft. She was eleven the night her own magic answered her father's hands. A priest in crimson robes stepped from the crowd and claimed her before the mob could light the kindling.
He called it salvation.
He burned her village to the ground to make sure no one could call it anything else.
Now she is Wren, silent, watched, and quietly extraordinary, the secret instrument of a Royal Confessor whose ambitions reach far beyond the crown he serves. Only one person in the palace sees her clearly: Prince Kaelen, the second-born son with nothing of his own but a gift for noticing what no one else does.
What begins between them as stolen friendship deepens, dangerously, into something that could destroy them both. Father Thaddeus has spent seven years sharpening Wren for a single moment. And when that moment comes, the only weapon that can stop him is the one he forged himself.
A lush, slow-burning tale of witches and princes, faith twisted into power, and the long, patient work of becoming unbreakable.
The Witch and The Spare
By S. B. Logue
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Format: Novel
Publication Status: Self-Published
Intended Audience: New Adult, Ages 18 to 30
Comparable Films / Books:
THE WITCH AND THE SPARE will appeal to readers of From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout, with its sanctified heroine set apart as a religious institution's sacred instrument, and to fans of the theocratic intrigue and heretical magic of Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne. It also shares the gilded-cage tension of Alexis Henderson's House of Hunger, in which a girl of no means is taken into a powerful house to be used.
Content Considerations
Content Warnings:
- Sexual content or intimacy, Child abuse or neglect, Religious conflict
Additional Notes:
- This story contains mature themes, including: emotional manipulation and gaslighting, religious/institutional power struggles, themes of trauma and captivity, violence and threats of execution.
Additionally, this novel features high-heat romantic scenes (Spice Level: 3/5).
Also: Commercial use cover art should be available by end of September.
About the Author
“I'm a lifelong fantasy nerd, raised on Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and stacks of fantasy novels, with an English degree to back up the obsession. I write fantasy and romantasy featuring magic systems, strong female characters, messy romance, and neurodivergent perspectives, because I write what I know and love. My stories tend to explore found family, characters figuring out who they are, and the push and pull of power, both magical and human. I live on Canada's west coast, and you'll usually find me in my Lego-plant-filled she shed, The Shawffice, with a dog and a kid close by.”
Short Film Adaptation Idea
I think a trailer style would be best. The book has four parts, starting in childhood moving through to adult hood. Some key scenes from each part:
Part One, the Witch. Open cold and quiet. A child's hands, a village at dusk, the ordinary sounds of Harrowick. Then the square: her father's hands at her throat, the world tilting, the eruption. Wind and fire, a circular gust that throws him back, every flame roaring up. Faces turning, the word landing like a verdict. "Witch." Then crimson robes stepping through the smoke and a soft voice. "I'll take the child." Cut to black. One card sets the only rule that matters: witches hang, and the church calls its own a miracle.
Part Two, the Ward. The scale flips from village to palace. Stained glass, a throne room bigger than any church, gilded chambers that are plainly a cage. Sparrows in the garden, breadcrumbs, and a boy with dirt under his fingernails who approaches slow, like she might bolt. He sets a book beside her. The first thing that isn't fear crosses her face. Let his humour carry this stretch, the spare's dry one-liners, so the audience falls for him at the same speed she does. This is the warmth, and it has to be real before you break it.
Part Three, the Weapon, faster and darker. The candle lesson, flames climbing as she strains, Thaddeus close to her ear. "Remember what happens to witches without the crown's mercy." Wren in burgundy before a roaring crowd, hands raised, crops greening, the sick rising, God's favour performed at a cost you can see in her body. Then the turn, and this is the beat you were missing. The crown reasserts its claim on Kaelen. Court finery, Lady Karina at his side, a betrothal spoken aloud, and Wren watching from the edge of the room in her church robes, her face going still, that stillness that is her only shield. His back to her as he's led away. The music hollows out. For a moment it looks like duty won, like he chose the throne and left her to it. Hold there a beat too long, so it hurts.
Then the reversal, and you drop the score out before you slam it back. Kaelen facing his father. "You're in love with her." A beat. "Yes. I am." A hand reaching for hers. "We have until first light. Then we run." And the flurry: firelight, a masked crowd, robes moving through a cathedral, her eyes going wide, a flame catching, cut cut cut, no context, no resolution, only velocity. Black. The tagline card.
A witch the crown would hang. A miracle the church can't survive without. She is both, and neither is a choice.
