Enemies-to-lovers

Sentinels & guides

Hurt/Comfort

Slow burn

Fated bonds

Forbidden love

Hidden identity

Angst with a happy ending

Book One

Cover illustration by Susutya · Cover design by Bizarre Design Works (X: @BIZARRE_WORKS)

Book One

Everyone calls Ashiel a Hero. He knows better.

Ten years ago, a common-born soldier brought down a dragon through sheer luck. The kingdom of Iris crowned him its Hero, and Ashiel has spent every day since keeping up the lie — a Guide with no magic of his own, surviving on the stored mana in his late mother’s pendant. Now, with the Tempesta Empire pushing Iris toward war, his orders never stop coming: dismantle an enemy-backed research facility, hold the line against a monster stampede. Every mission fit for the Hero he has never been.

Dizgiero has power enough to be feared as the Overlord. No Guide has ever matched a Sentinel like him, and he has learned to dread their touch as much as he needs it. Then he keeps crossing paths with a soft-hearted enemy soldier whose tuning quiets his senses for the first time in his life… and he recognizes the man who saved him ten years ago.

A fraud who can soothe anyone but himself. A monster no one has ever soothed. They ought to be enemies. Instead, with every meeting, they find in each other what neither has ever had — someone who knows the weight of a title he never chose, and the loneliness hiding beneath it. But the Empire is done waiting for its war, and war has never cared what two men have become to each other.

A Dark Guideverse MM Romance featuring an obsessive Sentinel who won’t let go and a Hero built on lies. Volume 1 of the Phony Hero series. Volume 1 ends on a cliffhanger; the series concludes with a happy ending.

Book Two

Cover illustration by Susutya · Cover design by Bizarre Design Works (X: @BIZARRE_WORKS)

Book Two

The Hero of Iris has one war left to stop. He plans to do it from inside the enemy’s walls.

As Iris and the Tempesta Empire slide toward open war, Ashiel accepts the mission no one else can survive: enter the imperial capital alone, disguised as a Guide bound for servitude, and cut the conflict off at its root. His cover holds — until fate hands him to the one Sentinel in the Empire who knows his face. Dizgiero.

Behind enemy walls, on borrowed time, they finally have what the battlefield never allowed them: hours that belong to no kingdom, and a bond deepening into something neither of them will name. But a peace this fragile can’t last. The Emperor has been forging Sentinels into living weapons — a project called Alpha — and nothing serves his ambition better than an off-the-scale Sentinel who has, at last, found his Guide.

The Empire wants its weapon. The lie demands its due. And every phony Hero has a last day.

A Dark Guideverse MM Romance. Volume 2 concludes the Phony Hero series — with a happy ending.

This list is more specific than the notices above and contains major spoilers for the entire series.