Why the Unconventional Romance in Defender of Histories?

***Spoiler alert!*** If you haven’t yet read Defender of Histories, you might want to click away…

or keep going, if you want an inside look at what happens before you read.

The few people (like, literally 3) who read the earliest draft of Defender of Histories might remember that the first story of Iathium’s supreme ruler was radically different. When I began drafting the book, he was a much older man named Lorcan (which I later changed because of a character in Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series with the same name). Rí “Lorcan” (whose name was later changed to Corlan due to a similar, very popular, character name it overlapped with) was murdered by his wife, Macha, during Nami Mostari. The story’s earliest iteration was a whodunnit of sorts, complete with missing manuscripts from the archive (hello, MacGuffin!).

I got about 60,000 words into the first draft before I realized the story needed more lead-in…so I went back to the beginning and began writing again. My original intent was to add a few chapters to the beginning, but as my fellow writers know, it wasn’t that straightforward. As I drafted and re-drafted, the king became younger…and younger. He went from being a middle-aged man in his late 40s/early 50s to a younger man in his late 20s. Finally, I lowered his age to 19 and re-named him Eremon (his father received the moniker Corlan, a rework of the original name choice).

Eremon emerged as a warm, kind, passionate, and idealistic character—in short, an achingly good person with the best of intentions (though often naive in his execution of them). The story had already established that his death would be a major plot point, and I was prepared to do what needed to be done to move the narrative forward…except I didn’t realize what I had gotten myself into.

In terms of the end-game romance in this series, my vision has always been for Aidryn and Lira to end up together. (If you’ve read book 1, hopefully this isn’t a major shock. ) They’re my Anne and Gilbert, my Katniss and Peeta, you get the picture…but the first time I wrote Eremon and Lira into a scene together, I groaned, “Oh, no.”

They were so good together, it hurt.

Lira and Eremon weren’t supposed to have a love story…or so I thought. But there was instant chemistry from that first anointing scene. At first, I flew straight into the bargaining stage of grief. Wasn’t there a way I could save Eremon? Did he really have to die? What would happen to Aidryn if he didn’t? Would Lira still have a story if he survived?

The Anointing scene art by Anna Shoemaker. Commissioned for The Witness Tree Chronicles.

I bargained for a long while before my characters gently let me know that this was still the direction the story needed to go. That didn’t make it any easier to accept, and it definitely didn’t make it easier to write. To date, Eremon’s death is the hardest scene I’ve ever written. (Updated Nov. 2023 - yeah, it was still a hard one, but I’ve written a few more that now compete with it!)

Finally, the manner of Eremon’s demise was inspired by my friend, reader, and enabler Christa, who has been on this crazy ride with me since day one. When I described Eremon’s magical inheritance to her and told her that I was trying to decide how, exactly, he was meant to die, she chimed in with, “What do you think happens to a person with a mix of magic like that?” And we were on our way.

For all of Eremon’s suffering and his tragic fate in Defender, I’m happy to say his story isn’t yet complete. He is still a critical part of Lira’s character arc, and I’m excited to share the rest of his story with you beginning in Keeper of Keys.

Order your copy of Keeper of Keys here.

If you haven’t yet read book 1, Defender of Histories, that’s here.