Anti-Villains Take Romantasy

Violet Thistlewaite has put her villain days behind her. She’s come to Dragon Rest for a fresh start after her once-mentor, the evil sorcerer Shadowfade, was finally defeated. She has big plans to open up a plant shop and put her days of evildoing behind her. But if anyone finds out about her past, she can kiss all of those plans goodbye. And her new landlord’s brother? He asks way too many questions.

Shesheshen is the monster all the villagers fear—all except a woman named Homily, who nurses the shapeshifter back to health after she’s chased off a cliff by monster hunters. Homily is kind and helpful, and Shesheshen is fast falling in love with her. She’d be the perfect home for her future eggs. Unfortunately, Homily is also searching for the shapeshifter she believed cursed her family. Can their love story end in anything other than blood?

Fated to fall in love. Fated to destroy each other. Vina and Simran are characters in the story of their lives—reincarnated fragments of an ancient tale they are forced to play out again and again to tragic effect: Vina as the loyal knight to the Queen, Simran as the evil witch of the woods. Falling for each other means beginning the cycle anew, something that can only, inevitably, end in death. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if the stories being so carefully guarded by the royal court are more complicated than everyone has been led to believe?

Iris Weyward is a villain—at least, she wants to be. She’s trying really, really hard, but no one seems to take her seriously. Especially when the new orc bodyguard she brings back from the dead proves to be more smiles than snarls. Even worse: she kind of likes it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, just as she contemplates the moral quandary of falling for her employee, her sisters show up with an even bigger problem: their magic is fading, and the only way to fix it may mean accepting their true nature at last.

Cyrus has been at the villain game for some time, comfortable in his role tormenting the local villagers. So finding out that his reputation has become, well, somewhat less than terrifying is a wake-up call. Sure, he’s hiding the true nature of his plant magic, and he hasn’t exactly been causing mayhem and destruction on a mass scale lately, but who is these days? That’s why an utterly outrageous proposal from one of Athaca’s most beloved heroes to stage a series of altercations might be just the thing he needs. Finding out said hero is somewhat less sterling than his reputation suggests and falling for him, however, could prove even more disastrous to Cyrus’s role as a villain than his dwindling status ever could.

Sometimes the villain isn’t who you think. When Cinnamon saves a handsome man who turns out to be a demon, she certainly isn’t expecting to get dragged along on his quest. Even more shocking: apparently, everything she thought she knew about the world is incorrect, the Goddess she worshipped is actually an evil witch, and demons aren’t the evil beings she was always taught to expect. Cin would be more annoyed, but Fallon keeps burning his shirt off, and honestly, she’s enjoying the view.

In this Beauty and the Beast-inspired novella, a failed scholar named Yên is sold off by her people to one of the last dragons on Earth. She expects to be tortured and killed by the fearsome dragon. Instead, she’s tasked with tutoring the dragon’s unruly children. Vu Côn is a terrifying host, harsh and unyielding. But in a palace where every door hides dangerous secrets, Yên begins to realize that the dragon’s strict nature may be a kindness. Vu Côn is nothing like she expected, and soon she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the very being keeping her caged.