Cursed One

For thousands of years, humanity has called her a child-killer. They have it backwards.

In time, humanity gave her many names. Lilith. Lamashtu. Demoness. Child-killer. When a baby is lost before birth, she comes to hold its last flicker of light so it never dies alone. She has done this since the first mothers grieved. She has never held a living child of her own.

Now she is close to breaking free of the curse that binds her to her unwanted duty. But each time she resists her summons, the world pays. Birds fall from the sky. Reefs bleach white. The earth cracks open. She is willing to let it break.

Then a woman who has lost three pregnancies invites her in, and the woman’s fearless young daughter starts calling her auntie. Something long frozen inside the goddess begins to thaw.

And then the impossible happens: she becomes pregnant. Her body cannot carry the child to term.

She has three months to choose. End the pregnancy and finally be free—or let the woman carry the child and remain bound to her curse forever.

But becoming a mother means facing the sister she adored, the son she lost, and the ancient betrayal that turned a grieving goddess into a monster.

CURSED ONE is a dark, mythic speculative novella about infertility and pregnancy loss, sisterhood, what makes a mother, and the making of female monsters.

Content warnings: pregnancy loss, stillbirth, traumatic childbirth, infertility, violence against pregnant women, suicidal ideation, sibling abuse, and mass death.