The Pitch
After losing her family in a fire, a young woman enrolls in a university—but when a powerful being threatens her life at her new school, she’s forced to make another deal with the dark god who lit the match.
When Evelyn Black makes a vow to a charming, dark god called the Nightweaver, she only asks for her freedom—not for him to kill the grandparents who abused her or burn the town that watched it happen. After months of being plagued with guilt and loneliness, Evelyn receives a letter from the illustrious Ravenscroft University, her late father’s dream school.
In the halls filled with as many secrets as students, Evelyn believes she’s found the place where her tortured soul finally belongs. As a specter and another old god threaten her life, she strikes a desperate deal with the Nightweaver: her safety for her heart.
Evelyn steps into the gravity of a grand, cosmic love centuries in the making. After a lifetime of grief and sorrow, Evelyn is shaken when the specter reveals that she is a pawn in an ancient game of revenge against the Nightweaver. Evelyn must trust their love will save them both, or risk losing everything she’s only just found.
TO DROWN THE DARK blends the otherworldly bargains and macabre world of Phantasma by Kaylie Smith with the immortal yearning and darkly divine love interest of Nightshade by Keri Lake. Our male love interest shares similarities to Luc in The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab, while the novel incorporates the gothic atmosphere of Robert Eggers’ 2024 adaptation of Nosferatu. Other comparable titles include Gothikana by RuNyx, Rhapsodic by Laura Thalassa, and Belladonna by Adalyn Grace.
comparable titles
“Vow yourself to me, little dove,” the god whispered with a voice steeped in midnight dreams.
Hair the color of moonlight, utterly and artfully messy, fell across his forehead when he stared down at Evelyn. Within the black hole of his irises, tiny flecks of silver and gold shifted like constellations reforming in the sky. She felt like one of them, like she was a fallen star about to be swallowed by the night.
“I’m not sure I can… There’s darkness in you. I can feel it.” Evelyn didn’t know how, but it was there, lurking beneath his voice, its venom sinking into her bones and chilling her every thought.
“Darling,” he drawled. “I am darkness.”
Evelyn’s heart quivered in her chest, yet to her surprise, there was no fear. There was only him. The awful, beautiful rightness of surrendering to something far older and far more powerful.
Even the stars held their breath.
“I… I vow. I vow myself to you, Nightweaver.”
The Nightweaver smiled, slow and satisfied. “Oh, Evelyn. You have no idea what you’ve just done.”
Nothing happened. For a moment, the world quieted, and Evelyn stood alone.
A single star flickered. Then another. And another.
The constellations—once wondrous and warm—shifted into strange, jagged shapes as if the sky itself were fracturing. Stars rained down like ashen shards of glass slicing the snow. Black smoke curled in the air, consuming the night with clouds of darkness.
Just above the horizon, the crescent moon’s grin widened.
The world of dreams didn’t just fade. It shattered. Until nothing remained but nightmares.
One by one, a chorus of orange lights appeared in the distance. The air turned heavy with the bitter smell of burning wood. The taste of bile and suffering pervaded Evelyn’s throat.
And then the screams began.
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