Read the First Chapter of Highly Anticipated Romantasy Sequel The Robin on the Oak Throne

In a summer that’s full to bursting with buzzy romantasy titles, one of the most anticipated sequels is author K.A. Linde’s follow-up to last year’s The Wren in the Holly Library. Titled The Robin on the Oak Throne, the second installment in Linde’s urban fantasy romance picks up where its predecessor left off, as Kierse wrestles with the revelation that she was actually part of an ancient race of Fae and the fact that the warlock she’d trusted betrayed her.

Now, Kierse’s left New York and has a new mission: Steal a bracelet from the Queen of the Nymphs in the Palace of Versailles. Trade it for answers. But when things go sideways, it’s that same warlock who saves her, leaving Kierse forced to work with him…and figure out the future of their complicated, combustible bond. 

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

Kierse McKenna just shattered the Monster Treaty. Again.

It wasn’t entirely her fault. The job was supposed to be simple: steal a goblin-made bracelet off of the Queen of the Nymphs in her own palace. Trade the bracelet for a way to uncover the truth about her past. Except everything goes sideways.

And then he shows up to save her.

Graves—the warlock who ensnared her, betrayed her, and left her to fend for herself. He’s a villain. A monster draped in charm and shadows. And gods help her, he always knows exactly what she wants.

But Graves never does anything for free. He has a job for his favorite little thief. One that will pit her against the most powerful monsters in existence, including his mortal enemy, the Oak King.

An ancient artifact has been located, and only together can they hope to steal it. She just has to let him in.

But once she lets a monster in, he’s impossible to forget… and even harder to resist.

The Robin on the Oak Throne won’t hit shelves until June 17, but we’ve got an exclusive look at the sequel’s first chapter for you right now. 

 Chapter One

Tromping through wet pastureland in high heels was a crime against humanity—unlike the crime Kierse was about to commit. She stepped out of the squelchy green grass and onto the ancient, graveled walkway with a sigh of relief. New York City hadn’t prepared her for acres of empty farmland on the outskirts of Paris or otherwise.

She lifted her dark eyes to what lay at the end of her trek: the magnificent Versailles gardens. The greenery was bracketed by twin towering fountains boasting statues of the gods mounted on gilded horses. A long grass promenade cut between the fountains with bonfires igniting the night and revealing the entrances that led deeper into the wooded grounds. On the top of the hill, in all its splendor, was the Palace of Versailles.

Kierse could only imagine what it looked like at the height of King Louis XIV’s reign. Tonight, it was teeming with both humans and monsters for the annual Beltane festival. A party to which Kierse hadn’t exactly been invited.

Not that that had ever stopped her. There were always entrances and exits for a clever little thief. And having multiple exits was thieving rule number one.

But for now, she was just a girl blending in with the crowd in a pink satin slip dress with a thigh-high slit, her dark hair piled on the top of her head and her makeup light like spring. No one paid her any mind as she snagged a glass of champagne off of a human waiter’s tray and navigated the grounds.

Kierse had one mission today—steal a bracelet from the Queen of the Nymphs.

Step one: get an invitation into the palace.

Well, that was the easy part.

She’d already picked her mark as she ascended the stairs to the promenade. A group of female nymphs traipsed around a bonfire in nothing but tiny scraps of dresses, little purses at their hips, and flower crowns. They were almost all shorter than Kierse with a kaleidoscope of hair color and wide, slightly unnatural eyes. The few horned male nymphs lounged on the other side of the fire, shirtless in white linen trousers.

Kierse bumped into a nymph with vibrant magenta hair as she passed, sloshing champagne everywhere.

“Oh! Pardon,” Kierse said by way of apology.

The nymph spit rapid French in Kierse’s direction, and while the girl was distracted, Kierse slipped the crisp card out of her bag. She discreetly moved the invite to her purse, waving her other hand to indicate she didn’t understand.

The nymph laughed at her lack of comprehension and returned to the festivities. A similar interaction back home could have ended in disaster. But the rest of the world hadn’t suffered the way that New York had during the Monster War. Back home they were four years past the war and just coming to the other side of things. Here, when the monsters had stepped into the light, the humans had made deals with them before it devolved so drastically.

Tonight, phoenixes controlled the flames of the bonfires that nymphs deftly jumped over, performing their fertility rites. Mer lounged in fountains, and shifters jumped in and out of their animal forms at will over the hedges and into the tree line. Humans drank champagne and mingled with vampires and werewolves and an incubus/succubus pair.

Laughter rang out.

Lips locked.

Revelry ensued.

All excellent cover for Kierse’s plan. She ditched her champagne flute on a table, thankful it had helped her with thieving rules three and four: distraction and sleight of hand.

She palmed the heavy cardstock invitation gilded with the sun king’s symbol, granting access into the palace proper. Step one complete.

Step two: get inside the palace.

Kierse filed into the line behind a shuffling goblin. He passed off his invitation. The troll bouncer scanned it and then nodded, allowing him access. He repeated the process with Kierse’s stolen invite. Then she was breezing through the doors and inside.

Her breath caught at the sheer magnitude of the place. It didn’t matter how much time she’d spent memorizing the original blueprints or the hours engaged on a tour earlier in the week. She would never get used to the display of wealth. There was money, and then there was the magnitude of this place in all its extravagance.

Kierse turned off the part of her brain that calculated the cost of everything. The answer was unfathomable. She wasn’t here to steal just anything. From here, she needed to get into the queen’s chambers. Despite modern adjustments to the over seven-hundred-thousand-square-foot palace, the rooms that the current queen resided in had been the same for hundreds of years.

Thankfully, Kierse had perfect cover. Every attendee had the option of meeting with the queen publicly. She would be in the throne room receiving guests until midnight, when the ball officially began. It was one of the new customs she had instituted when she’d reclaimed her ancestral land. These woods had been home to the dryads long before humans had built on the property. The queen was so beloved that she’d had other monsters rally to her side to reclaim the forest and place her on the throne of Versailles.

And honestly, good for her. Kierse could appreciate a woman who could take back what was rightfully hers. It was a process that Kierse was still working on for herself. Especially considering how her life had been turned upside down last winter.

Five months ago, she had learned she had magic, stolen a spear straight out of Celtic myth, and discovered she was part of a race of ancient Fae—a will-o’-the-wisp. The last wisp in existence. All while falling for the dark warlock who had upended her life—Graves.

The same person who had lied to her, withheld her history, and broken her trust.

So she’d left New York to find answers that didn’t come with strings attached. While she missed the city, her family…and even Graves, she wasn’t ready for that reunion.

She didn’t have time to think about Graves. He was a problem for another day. Right now came step three, the tricky part: sneak into the queen’s rooms.

Kierse extricated herself from the flow of people heading toward the receiving room. When she came upon the next enormous staircase, she waited until the pair of goblin guards were distracted by a group of werewolves to slip past and up the stairs. Her feet were feather light as she crept along the deserted upper level, toward the private quarters. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm against her chest, and an old, familiar smile graced her features.

It wasn’t a natural smile. It was her wrong smile. The one that said she liked the thieving. The danger, the suspense, the act of doing something she wasn’t supposed to do.

It sure helped that she was damn good at it. She wouldn’t go as far as to say the best in the business, but her old mentor, Jason—may he rot in hell—had been the best in New York, and she’d ended up better than him.

Now to get that bracelet and get out of there. Then she could happily return to Dublin, where Gen was safely tucked away, working on their next fruitless mission into the Irish countryside.

Kierse blew out an exasperated breath as she hurried down the crisscrossed hardwood floors. The hallway was white and narrow with arched windows looking out across the grounds to the left opposite a series of closed wooden doorways. The rooms she glimpsed weren’t decorated to the same picturesque standard she’d seen on the tour earlier that week. Instead, she found peeling antique wallpaper, furniture covered with white sheets, and even empty rooms with exposed wires. They were in sharp contrast to the magnificent Hall of Mirrors, the carefully restored display of original bedrooms, and thousands of priceless works of art.

It made the palace feel more real than myth. Much like everything else in her life.

Following the blueprint in her mind, she turned down an empty servant hallway. Thankfully, most of the workers were busy with the rest of the party. Then her enhanced Fae hearing picked up the sound of voices up ahead.

Kierse cursed, backtracked a few steps, and slid behind a large, floor-length curtain. She held her breath as two female voices approached and then passed her, speaking in hushed French. She’d learned a few passing words before she’d made the trip, but they certainly weren’t sufficient to follow this conversation.

When the coast was clear, Kierse eased back out and hastened down the rest of the hallway, nearly to her destination. She peered around the corner and found two guards standing in front of the queen’s chambers. Same as when she’d slipped away from her group on the tour—they’d taken the queen’s bedchamber off the official route now that the palace was occupied once more. Lucky for her, she wasn’t going in through the front door.

Kierse retrieved her tools, delved into her wisp magic, and manipulated time. From one breath to the next, the world slid into slow motion. The gold of her magic floated around her as she darted to the door adjacent to the queen’s rooms and got to work with her lockpicks. An easy click of the lock later, she pushed into the room and closed the door firmly behind her. She released her magic, letting everything come back into focus.

Her wisp magic was something she was still getting used to, but her slow motion had always been part of her. The little edge that she used to get herself in and out of bad situations. It was the newer magic that she was still wrangling. Like wards.

She pressed her hand to the door, closed her eyes, and pushed her intent into the door. A trickle of power rushed into the frame. She shivered at the release. That would act as a trip wire for at least the next hour. If anyone walked through this door, she would know to use another exit.

Praying she wouldn’t need to, she hurried to the balcony window and slipped through it into the cool spring air. The party didn’t wrap around to this side of the palace, so the grounds were empty of witnesses. Clouds hung heavy on the horizon, promising rain. She needed to be done before it reached her.

She judged the distance to the next balcony with unease. Before the spell that hid her true nature had been removed, revealing her Fae heritage—pointed ears and all—Kierse never would have attempted this. And though she’d gotten over her fear of heights before—thanks to a quick shove from Jason and a swift plummet to the ground below—she didn’t particularly want to test a three-story drop. But with her new magic came increased sensory awareness, quicker reflexes, and strength. Not that she was 100 percent confident on using any of these new skills, but tonight she’d have to make it work. Because a human wasn’t going to make this jump.

Good thing she was no longer human.

Kierse winced at that. She still identified as human, having spent the last twenty-five years thinking she was one. Thinking otherwise sat wrong with her. At least she’d learned enough magic to glamour her pointed ears back into the rounded ones she’d had most of her life. It was useful on missions where she needed to blend in, but sometimes she liked to wear the glamour just to feel more like herself.

She slipped off her heels, leaving them hidden on the balcony, then hiked up her skirts and scrambled onto the iron balustrade. She hissed as the iron touched her bare skin. It didn’t incapacitate her like the faerie tales had made it seem like it would, but it also wasn’t comfortable.

“Here goes nothing,” she said.

With a spring, she jumped, reaching out for the enormous lantern suspended between the two balconies. She caught it and swung back once, her muscles protesting the strain. Then on her forward swing, when her momentum was at the right angle, she released. She barely held back a scream as she launched, landing in a roll on the next balcony. She heard a rip from her dress. Fucking great.

Kierse stood on shaky legs. Well, she’d made it.

She dusted off her dress and inspected the rip. It had only made the already high slit slightly obscene. This was why she wore practical clothing when she broke into places, but there hadn’t been another choice for this job. And now there wasn’t time to deal with it.

After a quick listen at the door, she pushed into the queen’s opulent chambers. Everything was sixteenth-century chic, à la King Louis XIV, with patterned armless chairs and an impressive four-poster bed with gauzy white curtains obscuring it from view. Kierse strode across the antique rugs and to a door at the back of the room. Her contact had told her exactly where the bracelet would be. She felt her thieving smile return as she swung open the door and revealed the safe behind.

Nothing fancy, but it didn’t need to be. Kierse inspected the wards written around its edges—fleur-de-lis inside that illusive language she always felt hovered at the edge of her understanding. The magic was old—a warlock had put these wards in place a long time ago. Not that a magic’s age affected Kierse’s ability to bypass it.

Kierse’s main magical ability was absorption. Magic didn’t affect her unless she took in way too much magic at once. Which meant the wards weren’t a problem, and she could crack a lock like this in her sleep.

The safe was older than the warding, which always worked in her favor. She pressed her ear to the safe door, listening to the tumblers as she put together the code. Then she grinned devilishly as she turned the dial one last time and the whole thing popped open.

“Excellent,” she breathed.

Inside was an assortment of sparkling jewels all encased in lush gold and silver settings. It was a smaller collection than she’d been anticipating. Probably just what the queen wore on the regular—not the state jewels.

The bracelet she was after was goblin-made with an amethyst at the center of the silver filigreed band. It should have been here amidst the jewelry. While there was every other manner of gemstone, there wasn’t a single amethyst bracelet in sight.

“Fuck,” she hissed.

A goblin back in Dublin had assured her it was in the queen’s vault and that no one else they’d hired had been able to access it. If she could steal it, he’d give her a coin to access the goblin market. A coin she desperately needed. Part of her had known that all of this trouble meant the bracelet was far more valuable than what the goblin was offering in exchange, but she figured wiping the smug smile off of his face would be worth it. Except…it wasn’t here.

Everything had gone right, and yet there was no bracelet. Where the hell could the queen be keeping it? She scoured the safe one more time, testing for a false back or hidden compartments, but no amount of looking would make the bracelet appear. With another curse, she sealed up the safe and made a quick sweep of the queen’s rooms, but there didn’t appear to be any other safe inside her chambers. There was likely another vault deep in the heart of the palace hiding the rest of her jewels, but that was an entirely different sort of mission. The kind Kierse would need a great deal more planning to attempt.

“Fuck,” she repeated as she backtracked to the window.

She made the return jump to the lantern, and her hand caught on the edge as she moved forward. She withheld a cry as it split open. At least she’d judged the trajectory better this time and landed on her feet on the neighboring balcony. Her palm was only bleeding a little, but still, she scoured the room until she found a handkerchief in a dresser drawer and wrapped it around her hand to stem the flow. Once that was finished, she reclaimed her heels, pulled them back on, and went to listen at the door.

It was silent, save for the two guards she had already accounted for. With a sigh, she pushed into slow motion and hustled back into the hallway. The guards didn’t even turn in her direction as she bypassed them. As soon as she was out of sight around a corner, she dropped out of slow motion with a huff. Her thoughts were locked on the bracelet and what she was going to have to do to acquire it now.

Then a vampire guard strode out of an alcove, fangs extended. A girl in a low-cut blue dress giggled behind him, trying to pull him back into their liaison. His nostrils flared before his eyes widened at the sight of Kierse.

The cut on her hand. Shit.

He barked at her in French.

“I…” she said in panic. She started to backtrack, but there were guards in the other direction as well.

“Wait, stop,” the man said, switching to English.

This would have been a good time for the rest of her new wisp powers to kick in. The powers she currently didn’t have but research said wisps were capable of. While she had time manipulation, absorption, glamours, and an affinity for finding treasure—which amounted to the ne’er-do-well thief variety of wisp magic—she was still missing magical intuition, pixy lights, portaling, and persuasion. Her ancestors had definitely been using the latter to lure people off their paths and manipulate them to a different course in all those old folktales. But she had spent all spring fighting with her powers and had come to the conclusion that either she couldn’t access them…or she didn’t have them. Since she was in dire straits with this vampire and they still didn’t manifest, she was going to go with the latter.

Which meant Plan B. Kierse could either play the stupid party guest or go for thieving rule number two: run. Running usually felt like the better option, but she didn’t have enough safe exits.

As the guard approached her, she made her choice. She put her hand to her chest and released a sniffle. “Thank God, I found you.”

Confusion flickered across his face. “You’re not supposed to be in here. You need to return to the party.”

“I got turned around,” she lied. “I’m not even sure how I got through here. And then I fell and cut myself.” She held her bleeding hand toward the vampire with a little tremble. “I would be so grateful if you could help me.”

She batted her eyelashes and tried to lay it on thick. She could act so long as she didn’t have to hold onto it for long. Stealth had always been a better option.

His eyes darted down to her hand, and then he hastily retracted his fangs. After clearing his throat, he said, “This way.”

He grasped her arm and propelled her down the hall.

“Wait, I—” she began.

Then a man rounded the corner ahead of them and said in a smooth voice, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

A chill ran up her back as she promptly froze. The guard stuttered in shock at the sight of the man dressed in a pitch-black suit. His midnight-blue hair was artfully pushed off of his angular face, and his gray eyes held the power of thunderstorms. He was easily the most beautiful nightmare Kierse had ever seen.

“Graves,” she whispered.

“Unhand my wife.”

Excerpted from THE ROBIN ON THE OAK THRONE by K.A. Linde. Reprinted with permission from Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing. All rights reserved.

The Robin and the Oak Throne will be released on June 17, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB