When I was little, other children called me a monster. A painting proved them right.

A lifetime of cruel taunts and heartbreak has taught Aurelia to hide, to not get too close to anyone. A painter and gallery docent, her only solace is in the art that can’t stare back. When a new piece arrives, depicting an angelic figure who shares the physical features she’s always thought of as monstrous, Aurelia searches for the artist, determined to get the answers her mother has long refused to provide.

But she isn’t the only one searching. There are others who want the artist—and the truth—silenced. Aurelia is attacked by figures from the painting, fierce warriors with wings and sharpened blades. Shaken and bloody, she manages to escape with her life but finds herself hunted by the Iyarri, who are anything but angels. As she comes to terms with her connection to them, Aurelia is drawn deeper into the heart of a millennia-old struggle. If she’s not careful, the consequences will tear her body, her heart, and the Iyarri in two.

Melissa Lynn Herold is artistically talented, scientifically minded, and magically fascinated, things that manifest in both her fiction and her nonfiction. An herbal alchemist, Melissa owns and runs NightBlooming, where she blends up herbs and oils that grow real-life fairytale hair, and has published two nonfiction books, Rehabilitating Damaged Hair Naturally and Coloring Hair Naturally with Henna & Other Herbs 

Heaven’s Silhouette, the first book in the Iyarri Chronicles, is her debut novel. She lives with her husband in a sweeping river valley, along with their mutinous cats and garden dotted with honeybees.