Seraphina Lachlan has always lived in the shadow of Briarhollow House, where old secrets cling like ivy. When her mother vanishes, Sera uncovers a hidden file marked ERASED, a record that should not exist. What she finds pulls her into a world of blood-bound bargains, ancient legacies, and enemies who move in the dark.
Nikolai Duskovar, son of the vampire king, was sent to watch her. He is both her fiercest protector and her greatest risk. Every step closer to him pulls Sera deeper into the court’s ruthless games, where trust can cost her, her life.
Then there is Silas, the man who walks her dreams. A guardian with a forgotten past, tethered to the Hollow Veil, he knows truths Sera cannot remember. His presence ignites what fate began long ago: a pull that binds the three of them, heart to heart, power to power.
As desire tangles with destiny, Sera must choose whom to trust, master the magic that calls her by blood, and confront the force that erased her family. The Hollow Veil does not forget, and once its shadows take hold, no one escapes unscathed.
Seraphina Lachlan has always lived in the shadow of Briarhollow House, where old secrets cling like ivy. When her mother vanishes, Sera uncovers a hidden file marked ERASED, a record that should not exist. What she finds pulls her into a world of blood-bound bargains, ancient legacies, and enemies who move in the dark.
Nikolai Duskovar, son of the vampire king, was sent to watch her. He is both her fiercest protector and her greatest risk. Every step closer to him pulls Sera deeper into the court’s ruthless games, where trust can cost her, her life.
Then there is Silas, the man who walks her dreams. A guardian with a forgotten past, tethered to the Hollow Veil, he knows truths Sera cannot remember. His presence ignites what fate began long ago: a pull that binds the three of them, heart to heart, power to power.
As desire tangles with destiny, Sera must choose whom to trust, master the magic that calls her by blood, and confront the force that erased her family. The Hollow Veil does not forget, and once its shadows take hold, no one escapes unscathed.
Seraphina
The first time Sera had stepped foot on the University of South Carolina’s campus, she’d been five years old, sticky from a Cherry Icee and clinging to her dad’s hand as though the world would end if she let go. It hadn’t been scary, exactly. Just... big. And even now, eighteen years later, not much had changed.
She passed the same marble columns every week. The bell tower still chimed ten minutes late, and the air still felt heavier here. The oaks arched overhead, ancient and knowing, their branches tangled into the hands of old gods watching her pass.
Her wavy brown hair caught bits of sunlight between the leaves, the faint red undertones sparking as if from hidden embers. Smoky gray eyes scanned the crowd, sharp enough to catch every movement but distant, as if her mind was always half elsewhere. At five foot one, she could vanish in a crowd. She wore her favorite vintage denim shirt, borrowed years ago from her father and never returned, and layered over a plain tee with worn leather boots.
Sera had started as a Childhood Education major because she loved stories and wanted to be the kind of teacher who noticed the quiet kids. Somewhere along the way, she picked up a minor in English and a deep, reluctant knowledge of APA (American Psychological Association) formatting. It wasn’t glamorous, but it felt solid in a world that kept pulling at her edges.
The main common area was crowded, as usual. Students passed by with earbuds in, eyes down, and their noses in their phones. Sera adjusted her bag and kept walking, trying not to think too hard about how different she felt now, as if she were circling the same places on a map, but none of them meant what they used to.
She wasn’t a kid tagging along anymore. Her father wasn’t the folklore professor who tossed her bedtime stories, scattering them across his lectures as if they were breadcrumbs. Not anymore. He’d taken a leave of absence after everything with her mom, and even though he was back now, the spark in his teaching was gone. His lectures were quieter, his stories flatter, as though he were going through the motions without actually being there.
Now she was just… stuck. She was a storm trapped in denim, a ghost haunting her own life. The world spun on, but she was the shadow left behind.
Sera checked her phone. There were no new messages since the conversation she had with Liv a few hours ago. Liv, or Olivia Rae Morgan, was her best friend, former roommate, and unofficial emotional support human. At 23, she worked as a research assistant in a biomedical lab while prepping her med school applications and complaining about them constantly.
Her beautiful blonde curls framed a face with icy blue eyes sharp enough to slice through nonsense at fifty paces. Liv was practical and science-minded, raised on lab reports, lemonade, and the kind of manners that could bury an insult in a compliment so smooth you’d thank her for it.
Beneath the Southern Belle polish was a spine of iron and a heart that didn’t hesitate. She was fiercely loyal, endlessly curious, and always the first to show up with takeout, side-eyes, and a spreadsheet color-coded by category of emotional collapse. She was Sera’s anchor to normalcy, whether Sera liked it or not.
Sera had turned most of her notifications off months ago, a slow retreat from everything. Social media was a lot when your mom had gone missing, and people kept posting “thoughts and prayers for Beth’s family” under black-and-white photos as if it were a funeral slide show. She hadn't even officially been declared dead. Just… gone.
One day, Beth was prepping Briarhollow for sale. The next? Vanished. No leads. No signs. Just locked doors and questions that unraveled when you tried to tug too hard. It had been three years. Long enough for everything to look normal on the outside, but not nearly long enough for Sera to stop checking shadows for her mother’s face.
Still, she opened the messages anyway, just in case.
Liv Don’t forget to eat something besides coffee. Real food. Not something that comes in a mug, bless it. That’s the level of adulthood we’re settling for today.
Sera What about sour gummy worms?
Liv Only if you chase them with protein. Preferably something with nutrients and not just vibes. Or, I dunno, a response to your best friend who’s been spiraling like a garden hose in a heat wave.
Sera I screamed at a vending machine and got peanut M&Ms. That counts, right?
Liv I will show up and drag your stubborn butt to therapy… in Crocs, like the fashion disaster I was born to be.
Sera You own Crocs?
Sera shot back, but her laugh died, snatched away by the hush settling over the stacks. The shadows pressed close, and her skin prickled like some ancient thing was watching, waiting.
Liv That’s what horrifies you about that sentence???
Sera Just… give me a few hours. I’m library-haunting today.
Liv Fine. But if you go dark on me again, I will absolutely sick Charli on you. And we both know she’s scarier than I am.
Sera Rude. But fair.
Liv You know I love you. But if you drag home another walking red flag with a jawline, I’m bringing sage and holy water, and you’re buying brunch and mimosas.
Sera No promises.
She adjusted her coat and turned toward the library. If nothing else, she could disappear there for a while. Breathe in the calm mustiness of old paper. Maybe pretend her life hadn’t started folding in on itself, cursed origami in human form.
The long steps up to the entrance felt steeper than usual, as though the building had aged in the last few weeks. Inside, the smell hit her with the force of a memory: wood polish, dust, floor cleaner, and that oddly specific scent of communal body odor. This was her safe place. At least, it used to be. It was one of the few places on campus where time didn’t feel as if it were sprinting toward a deadline.
She wandered through the stacks with no real destination, her fingertips trailing the spines in the hope they might whisper to her if she touched the right one. Her father’s lecture had ended hours ago, but she hadn’t wanted to leave. The world outside felt too loud lately. Too fast. Too… thin.
There was comfort in the weight of silence here. In the hush between breaths, the soft hum of old vents, the occasional click of a light flickering above in a far-off row. The library was a living thing. Ancient and always watching.
Her boots thudded softly on the carpet, and she paused in her favorite section, folklore, of course. Row after row of crumbling volumes stood as old guards keeping their silent watch. Some of the books were older than the university itself, their spines cracked and pages steeped in the scent of history.
She reached for a familiar title, the same one she used to flip through as a kid while sitting in the back of her father’s classroom. It bore a worn green cover, its edges frayed, and the corner of the spine was half-torn. The gold lettering was all but gone, the title lingering in the faintest trace: Veilwalkers and the Mirrorborn: A Guide to the Old South’s Supernatural Lore.
She remembered thinking it was just an odd little collection of ghost stories and backwoods myths. Her dad used to call it "harmless nonsense, with just enough truth to get people in trouble", but as she turned the cover now, something felt off.
Pages were missing, and the tears looked jagged, almost as if someone had pulled them out quickly. Red ink scrawled through the margins in places, angry and uneven. The book had definitely seen better days.
Sera frowned and tucked it under her arm. She’d bring it to the librarian later, maybe even ask if they had a cleaner copy or perhaps one that wasn’t falling apart.
She turned, meaning to head back to her usual table. That’s when she saw him.
At the far end of the row, half-obscured by a laminated sign featuring Cocky the Gamecock, the school’s overly enthusiastic mascot now pictured holding a book as if he hadn’t flunked out of Poultry Science 101, stood a man.
He was tall, unnervingly still, and his gaze was fixed upon her.
Sera narrowed her eyes. “Because that’s not creepy at all,” she muttered low to herself.
She glanced up at Cocky’s cartoon smile. It looked way too supportive for the situation.
“Nope. Not the time, feather face,” she added, stepping back.
Her gaze caught on his eyes. The shape. The weight of them. Something about them was familiar, a spark of recognition that gripped her chest before she could stop it.
Her stomach twisted.
The hairs at her nape stood on end, tension pulling tight beneath her skin. The air thickened, every breath metallic. Her pulse hammered, a frantic drum, wild and ancient.
With a gait that tried to pass for casual and failed spectacularly, Sera drifted a few stacks over. Her boot scuffed the floor, loud enough to echo in the quiet space. She knocked into the corner of a display as she moved, cursing quietly, but kept moving.
She didn’t look back. Couldn’t look back.
When she rounded the next row, he was there again. Same man. With the same unsettling stare.
This time, he stood in front of a large pane of decorative glass. The kind that mirrored the world, but warped it subtly, as though touched by ripples on a midnight pond, hinting at unseen depths and things that might rise from them. She glanced at it.
She saw herself. The stacks. The lights overhead. Her own face stared back, flushed, with a hint of pale beneath the flush, her hair loose around her shoulders in its natural waves. Those smoky eyes were wide, catching the light in a way that made the gray look almost silver.
And something else.
Where he should have been, the glass shimmered faintly. A vague distortion swirled where his body should reflect, rippling as if from heat waves or a smudge on the surface. No defined features. No clear outline. Just a warped silhouette, flickering in and out, a mirage at the edge of sight.
What the fuck was happening? The thought slammed into her, sharp and breathless, louder than the blood pounding in her ears.
Her stomach dropped. Her breath caught. Her fingers curled tightly around the edge of the nearest bookshelf. The world seemed to tilt, her balance stolen by the impossible.
He saw her staring.
For the briefest moment, his eyes shifted, just slightly, as though he recognized the exact second she noticed. As if he’d been waiting for it. Then he turned and walked away without a word, disappearing between the shelves.
One breath. Too fast.
Another. Too shallow.
Not again, she thought.
Not here. Not now.
She forced herself to breathe, to take a deep, calming inhale. Or at least… that was the idea. Instead, it came out shaky, sharp-edged, and nowhere near as grounding as she’d hoped. Her brain scrambled for logic, the same way it always did, but was laced with panic disguised as problem-solving. Maybe she was just overtired.
Maybe she’d skipped a dose of her medication. Or perhaps this was just the world’s most elaborate hallucination, brought to you by academic burnout and unresolved trauma. But beneath the noise, something deeper pressed against her thoughts, a shadow from childhood, clawing for her attention.
That was fine. Totally fine.
She turned away from the mirror, fast walking toward the exit as if she had an actual plan. Her boots clicked too loudly, and her breathing was too shallow. She didn’t look back, not at the man and certainly not at the glass.
She turned the corner and smacked into a stranger, chest-first.
“Oh my God …”
A pair of hands caught her before she could go full floor pancake. Her messenger bag swung sideways, thumping into her hip in protest.
“Whoa,” said a voice. “You okay?”
Sera blinked up at a student; she thought he might be one of the grad assistants. He looked vaguely familiar, in the way all overachievers with lanyards and color-coded tabs often did. He had on a button-down shirt with sensible hair. He was probably the kind of person who made spreadsheets for fun.
“Fine,” she said, lying like a champ. “Just… fast walking with poor depth perception.”
“Classic move.” He handed back a book that had fallen from her bag. “Are you sure you’re not about to pass out?”
“Nope. I’m upright. Thriving. Thanks.”
He didn’t move, just tilted his head slightly as if trying to place her. “You come in here a lot, right? Usually late? Folklore section?”
Sera froze. “I… yeah. Guilty.”
He smiled, not in a creepy way, more in the awkward, I'm-trying-to-be-normal-about-this kind of way. “It’s cool. I’m here a lot, too. I’m a teacher’s assistant for Dr. Barron, so I pretty much live in this building now. Pretty sure I’ve developed symbiotic moss with the book stacks.”
He held out a hand, a little hesitant. “My name is Jasper, by the way.”
“That sounds like a health concern.”
“Probably. But I’m too busy filing thesis citations to care.” He rubbed the back of his neck, clearly stalling. “Hey, so… there’s this cat café downtown, it’s called Ever Bean? They just got three new fosters, and they’re hosting a Halloween-themed trivia night. I’m pretty sure they have the cats wear tiny bat wings, if you're into something like that?”
Sera blinked.
“That sounded cooler in my head… ” he added quickly. “It’s okay if that’s not your vibe. I just thought… You know. It might be fun.”
She opened her mouth, ready to say something polite and noncommittal, when a flicker of movement snagged her attention.
The man in the mirror. He was still there.
Her stomach dropped in a swift, lurching freefall.
“Hey,” the assistant said gently, “you okay?”
Sera gave a tight, polite smile. “Sorry, yeah. I just remembered I forgot to… do something. Important thing. Thanks again for the save.”
She took off, boots thumping, heart pounding a mile a minute. The awkward maybe-date with the cat trivia guy dangled behind her, a loose thread she couldn’t afford to tug.
She turned around just in time to see the mirror again.
The man was gone.
Just… gone.
There were no footsteps. No fading of his presence. The glass reflected exactly what it should now: aisles, shelves, and her. Nothing else.
“Seriously?” she whispered. “You wait until I almost take out the library’s assistant of the month to ghost me?”
She ran a hand through her hair, fingers catching in a tangle she didn’t remember forming. Her heart was still racing, her skin clammy, but the adrenaline was already being replaced with embarrassment. Maybe he was never there, she thought. Perhaps she imagined the whole thing. But even as she told herself that, she didn’t believe it.
She moved to the edge of the section again, leaning her shoulder against the shelf and pretending to read the spine of an old anthology while her brain continued its self-sabotage spiral. She knew better than to ignore what she’d seen. This wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t even the tenth. The difference was… this time it didn’t feel as if a shadow lingered in the corner of her eye. It felt real. Familiar, even. As if fate had circled her name on a list, and now the world itself was holding its breath.
“Okay,” she whispered, arms crossed tightly over her chest, “Let's just go full crazy for a second, why not. Let’s say I did see him before. Where?”
She closed her eyes and tried to conjure the memory.
Trees. Rain. Wind. A storm that felt too big for the world she’d been in. And those eyes. She’d seen them before.
“What was that boy’s name again?” she muttered. “Gerald? No. That’s… that’s terrible. Trevor? Ew…Absolutely not. Matthew?” She paused. “No, that’s too normal. Too… forgettable.”
The memory shifted, just out of reach. A face in the dark. A pair of green eyes.
Her fingers gripped her elbows, and for a moment she was seven again, soaking wet, cold, and terrified. Wrapped in someone’s coat. Led out of the woods by a boy who didn’t feel human at all. Her rational brain had spent years chalking it up to childhood imagination. A coping mechanism. A dream.
But what if it wasn’t?
Sera stared down at her hands, flexing her fingers as if the motion alone could shake the tension loose. Her body buzzed with a strange energy, the kind you get after three too many espresso shots. Which, honestly, felt on-brand for her at this point.
She glanced toward the back corner of the library and made a beeline for the restroom, muttering “get it together” under her breath. Somewhere between the shelves and the shadows, something ancient stirred, waiting for her to remember.
Inside, the fluorescent lighting was way too bright, the kind that made you question your skincare routine and your life choices. She locked the stall, leaned against the cold metal door, and dug through her bag with the ferocity of a raccoon hunting for treasure.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Panic attack protocol. Step one: breathe. Step two: pills. Step three: stop talking to yourself like a cartoon character.”
Her fingers finally closed around the small orange bottle. She popped the cap and tapped it against her palm.
Nothing.
Her breath hitched.
She peered inside.
Still nothing. Just the dusty ghost of better days and a tiny, crumpled bit of cotton that mocked her from the bottom.
“Cool, cool, cool,” she whispered. “Because, of course, I’m out. Because the universe is just a big anxiety-themed escape room today and I forgot the damn clues.”
She considered shaking the bottle again. You know. Just in case the pills were hiding.
They weren’t.
Sera slid down until she was crouched over her bag, elbows on her knees, forehead resting against the cool stall wall.
“This is fine,” she mumbled. “I am fine. I’m just going to raw dog reality today… That’s fine.”
She laughed once, a sharp and breathless sound, and immediately regretted it. Her heart still felt as if it was trying to punch its way out of her chest.
“Should’ve gone to the cat café…” she muttered.
Eventually, she pulled herself together. Sort of. She splashed water on her face from the sink and took a deep, grounding breath.
When she stepped back into the stacks, the library felt different. Not bad. Just quieter. As though something had exhaled when she left and was waiting for her to notice it again. That’s when the memory hit her.
“She took a step forward, and the mirror fogged over. For a breathless moment, the glass shimmered. And then it pulled her in.”
Dreams in Heir to the Hollow take on the surreal quality of Alice in Wonderland, while the eerie split between our world and the Hollow Veil is reminiscent of Stranger Things. As for the book's romantic trio, think shadow daddy spice meets Twilight's Edward and Bella.
Though categorized as romantasy, its supernatural elements lean into sci fi fantasy; creatively atrocious creatures burst through breaches in the Hollow Veil in horror-inspired descriptions I won’t soon forget.
I sank into descriptions of Briarhollow and Sanctuary but cringed at the darkly powerful moments in Nik’s family home, Duskovar Manor.
Nik’s father Dorian is a dastardly vampire dead set on erasing Sera to save himself from an ancient curse. Dorian’s hold keeps Nik leashed to the manor until love (and lust) can release him, but his abusive past runs deep, and though he’s a virile vampire prince, he must overcome his trauma before he can step into his princely big boy pants. Though trigger warning worthy, the abusive scenes help explain Nik’s anger issues and relationship missteps with Sera.
Caused by the loss of her mother, emotional disappearance of her father, and strange events of her childhood, Sera’s anxiety hinders her at first, but it unravels into something less terrifying, something heartening and strong. Her magic and passion awaken and bloom as her story unfolds. I think she’ll become a supreme force as she accepts and tames her mysterious magic.
Comic relief provided by Bean the dog and Sera’s friends Charli and Liv, especially during Liv's hilarious reactions to supernatural events, break up darker moments and give the characters and scenes depth.
Though the intrigue intensifies when Alaric shows up, I questioned the motivation for his actions throughout the book but hope to see them explored more in further chronicles.
We’re kept in the dark about what Nik’s friend Jace truly is and how he falls so comfortably into the supernatural world, but he’s likeable, with main male character potential.
More of Nik’s brother, Asher, please. His inherently dangerous vampire power is understated; he’s sophisticated, thoughtful, and steadfast.
The plot clicks together in a fast-paced, emotional, passionate, surreal conclusion that creeps before it strikes. Without giving spoilers, the ending left me unsettled and curious for more of The Hollowblood Chronicles.