Welcome to Taeliana: a world of magic, high adventure and queer characters!
The Reluctant Ruler
Jeyreme Corbeau is the put-upon, overworked third son of the perpetually disinterested Baron Stefan Corbeau. While the Baron busies himself with drinking, Jeyreme is the invisible hand that actually keeps the Barony running, managing every tedious ledger, trade negotiation, and administrative chore his father deems beneath him. He is the loyal, if exhausted, workhorse of the family—at least on the surface.
The Grey Swan's Secret
This fragile order is shattered when a brazen highwaywoman calling herself the Grey Swan begins targeting merchants along the Barony's vital trade road. Finally roused from his stupor, the Baron is enraged. He issues a single, impatient command: Jeyreme is to hunt down and capture the thief immediately.
What Baron Corbeau doesn't know is that his dutiful third son is actually a transgender woman named Jey—and the woman behind the mask of the Grey Swan.
Jey has been meticulously planning her escape. Every coin stolen funds her desperate dream: to flee the constraints of her life, embrace her true self, and run away with her lover, Maisie, the spirited daughter of the local innkeeper. The Gray Swan's robberies are the illicit means to her personal liberation.
The Reckoning
Jey's double life is a ticking clock, and it accelerates when the impatient Baron makes a rash, catastrophic decision that gravely jeopardizes the safety and stability of the entire Barony.
Now, Jey must choose: obey her father and secure the Barony, or protect the secret that could grant her freedom. She must find a way to navigate a deadly, impossible course, stay true to herself, and survive the trials ahead. Add to this volatile situation the watching, otherworldly eyes of beings who have taken an unsettling interest in their fate, and Jey and Maisie might just make it out alive — but not unchanged...
The Ballad of the Grey Swan is available at…
Jey Corbeau
aka
The Grey Swan
Jeyreme is the third son of Baron Stefan Corbeau, and the oldest one still at home. Jeyreme is still there because someone needs to take care of the place while the Baron drinks himself insensate.
Jey is also very intelligent, self-trained as a barrister, one of the finest swordwielders in the Barony…
And secretly a trans woman. The Baron would never understand, and so Jey created the persona of the Grey Swan to start a second career as a highwaywoman and get the money she needs to get away however she can.
Our Heroes
Maisie Licara
Maisie Licara is the older daughter of the couple that runs the inn and tavern in Barony Corbeau. As such, she’s also the head server.
But she has dreams that stretch outside the life of a barmaid, dreams she put away as foolish. Then she met the grown-up third son of the Baron, and her heart did a flip at his looks and his wisdom.
That confused her tremendously, because one of her dreams involved finding a woman to love, and Jeyreme Corbeau, while a pretty boy, was still a boy… she thought.
She knows now about Jey being a woman, and about the Grey Swan, and is biding her time until they can run away together…
Interested in the music that helped inspire the book? Here’s a playlist…
