A legendary villa. A missing grandmother.
And an immortal poet who knows exactly why she vanished.
THIS SUMMER, THE VILLA HAS CHOSEN AGAIN.

I thought I knew the uses of a kiss,
The easy lies that lovers learn by heart;
I knew desire, appetite, and bliss,
And every graceful method of depart.

Then you arrived and made a fool of time,
With stubborn eyes that dared me to confess;
You turned my oldest sins into a rhyme
And made eternity feel meaningless.

I have been wanted more than I could bear,
Been touched by hands whose names I cannot keep;
Yet yours became the first I learned to fear,
Because I wanted more than skin and sleep.

So take the years that Hell forgot to claim.
Take every life I’ve wasted since my fall.
If loving you should cost me Byron’s name,
I’d give them George, and let them have it all.

— Gabriel Ashworth*

Mira Reynolds came to Europe looking for answers.

Years ago, her grandmother disappeared without a trace while investigating a cryptic invitation tied to Villa Diodati, the infamous house on Lake Geneva where Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and John Polidori spent the summer of 1816.

Everyone else eventually stopped looking. Mira’s grandfather never did. And neither does Mira.

Armed with a forgotten room of clues and a stolen postcard, Mira tracks the trail to Geneva, expecting locked gates and dead ends. Instead, she is let inside by a charming stranger.

Dr. Gabriel Ashworth is a reclusive, brilliant historian who claims his family has owned the estate for generations. He is arrogant, intensely private, and strangely interested in why Mira is searching for a woman who vanished nearly thirty years ago.

What Mira doesn’t know is that Gabriel has been lying about his identity for two centuries.

History remembers him as Lord Byron. And the moment Mira steps onto his terrace, the house remembers her, too.

Gabriel recognizes the signs instantly. The shifting corridors. The waking mirrors. The ancient magic stirring within the walls of a house that has spent centuries collecting sins. He tries to throw her out, to force her to run before the Villa claims her just as it claimed her bloodline before.

But the summons has already been issued.

Every Summer Solstice, thirteen souls are gathered at Villa Diodati for a masked storytelling ritual. Thirteen guests. Thirteen true tales. One dark entity waiting to harvest the souls of those who lie.

The house has already written the final name in ash, and it is a name Mira hasn’t even chosen yet.

With only seven days until the shortest night of the year, Gabriel refuses to stand aside and watch another Ferrucci woman disappear. To save her, he must let her close enough to unravel everything he has spent centuries hiding: his curse, his past, and the truth of the trap waiting inside Villa Diodati.

Because somewhere inside the timber and cursed stone, something has been waiting for Mira to come home.

On the night of the masquerade, Lord Byron is about to find out if you can cheat Hell twice.

The saga opens September 27, 2026.
Book Two arrives October 15, 2026.
Book Three arrives October 31, 2026.

Author’s Note

Lord Byron was real.

His scandals, his family history, his poetry, his exile, his relationships, and his death in Missolonghi in 1824 all belong to history.

This novel does not attempt to rewrite that history as fact. It takes the known life of Lord Byron and imagines what might have existed in the spaces history could never record.

Gabriel Ashworth is Byron’s fictional modern identity within this story, created for the supernatural timeline of The Cursed Poets Saga.

The opening verse attributed to Gabriel Ashworth is an original work of fiction written by Cara Ravelli, inspired by Byron’s life, family history, and literary legacy. It is not a lost, recovered, or previously unpublished poem by Lord Byron.

Historical figures, places, dates, letters, events, and details appear throughout the novel, sometimes faithfully and sometimes adapted to serve the fictional story.

Where history ends, the curse begins.

Cara Ravelli