Half a Soul (regency Faerie Tales, #1)

The novel is set in an alternate Regency-era England where magic is real and faeries occasionally cross into the mortal world.

In a prologue set nine years before the main story, ten-year-old Theodora Ettings, called Dora, encounters Lord Hollowvale, a faerie nobleman who claims Dora's late mother Georgina promised him her firstborn child. He seizes Dora and begins extracting her soul, but her younger cousin Vanessa Ettings stabs him with iron embroidery scissors. Hollowvale flees, having taken only half of Dora's soul. Dora's emotions dull to a dreamlike distance, and one of her green eyes drains to gray. Dora's aunt, Frances Ettings (Lady Lockheed), swears both girls to secrecy, and Vanessa gives Dora the scissors to carry at all times, since Hollowvale fears iron.

Nine years later, Dora is nearly twenty and considered unmarriageable because of her emotional flatness and mismatched eyes. Vanessa, who delayed her own debut to stay with Dora, insists they travel to London for the Season. They stay with the Countess of Hayworth, a friend of Auntie Frances. While left behind during outings, Dora wanders into a magic shop, where a scrying mirror shows her a vision of herself at a ball with a crimson stain across her chest and a fair-haired man behind her. There she meets Elias Wilder, the Lord Sorcier and court magician of England, and his friend Mr. Albert Lowe, a physician and war veteran who is Lord Carroway's third son and wears a silver prosthetic hand Elias crafted for him. Elias is rude and dismissive, but Dora's unflappable directness disarms him, and Albert secures invitations for the cousins to Lady Carroway's ball.

Auntie Frances and Lady Hayworth scheme to match Dora with Albert, whom they consider the least desirable Carroway son, in order to position Vanessa to attract his eldest brother Edward. At the ball, Elias, whom Albert has pressured into attending, pulls Dora onto the dance floor. She tells him about the mirror's vision, and he explains it likely shows the future. Dora realizes the stain is not blood but red punch and engineers its harmless fulfillment when a glass is spilled on her dress. Meanwhile, Vanessa privately reveals Dora's curse to Elias and offers to marry him in exchange for curing her cousin. He declines but agrees to investigate.

Elias examines Dora and gives her a scrying mirror enchanted to bypass his magical wards. When she looks into it, she sees a vision of Albert digging iron shrapnel from Elias's battlefield wounds, his magic disabled by the metal. Elias theorizes that Dora has "one foot in faerie," meaning part of her exists across the boundary between worlds, and suspects Hollowvale stole half her entire soul. Through nightly scrying conversations, their intimacy grows.

Lady Carroway arranges for Dora to assist Albert at the workhouses. Accompanied by Miss Henrietta Jennings, a former governess serving as chaperone, Dora visits the Cleveland Street Workhouse and is horrified by overcrowded sickrooms, children with bleeding hands, and the callous master George Ricks. They discover a little girl asleep for two days whom no one can wake, a victim of a sleeping plague that targets children. Elias carries the girl to an orphanage he secretly funds, run by Mrs. Martha Dun. Dora names the girl Jane and helps care for her, overwhelmed by a rare surge of anger that brings her to tears for the first time in years.

Dora and Albert continue visiting workhouses, while Dora translates a medieval French treatise on curses for Elias, finding that the prescribed cure for sleeping curses is true love's kiss. At a dinner at Carroway House, Elias's despair erupts into a tirade condemning the aristocracy's spending while people starve, wounding even Albert. Dora follows him outside, tells him he is grieving and needs to trust his friends, and holds him as he sobs. After reconciling with Albert, Elias confides to Dora that he was born in faerie or stolen as an infant, grew up under a cruel faerie father whom he killed, and fled to England. Their bond deepens, though neither names it.

At Lady Cushing's ball, Elias extinguishes every candle and fills the ballroom with floating pinprick lights like stars. Dancing among them, Dora feels happiness for the first time in years and realizes she is in love.

Edward Lowe proposes to Vanessa, and Auntie Frances demands Dora return to the country, declaring she will never marry and slapping her. Alone and despairing, with her scrying mirror confiscated, Dora stares into a vanity mirror wishing to be whole and accidentally scrys her own other half: Theodora, the passionate half of her soul, imprisoned in Hollowvale. Lord Hollowvale appears, snaps Dora's connection to her body, and pulls her fully into faerie.

In Hollowvale, Dora meets Theodora, who has endured nine years of captivity as the marquess's "English daughter." Hollowvale reveals that Georgina sold Dora for faerie gold before she was born. Dora and Theodora discover that Hollowvale has been purchasing children's souls from workhouse masters, including Ricks, and trapping them in Charity House, a faerie replica of the Cleveland Street Workhouse. All the sleeping plague victims, including Abigail (the girl Dora called Jane), are imprisoned there. Using soapy water as a scrying surface, Dora contacts Elias, who sits at her bedside at Mrs. Dun's orphanage, having tried every cure, including true love's kiss. She tells him the plague was never a disease: All the victims are in faerie. Hollowvale recaptures her before she can learn more.

Dora persuades Hollowvale to merge her two halves through a ball rather than torture, buying time. At the faerie ball, she learns from Lord Blackthorn, a friendly viscount, that iron, powerful magic, and trickery are the three ways mortals defeat faeries. Elias infiltrates in disguise, slips Dora her iron scissors, and reveals he has written to Lord Lockheed, Dora's uncle and guardian, asking for her hand. When a faerie chaperone states Elias must return Dora or marry her, he chooses marriage, and Dora confirms she is amenable.

When Hollowvale sees through the disguise, Elias challenges him to a duel. Hollowvale unleashes arctic cold while Elias counters with fire. Rather than simply cutting the magical threads binding the children to Hollowvale, which would free the living but leave the souls of already-dead children without a guardian, Dora stabs the iron scissors into Hollowvale's back, killing him. Theodora seizes his power, becoming Lady Hollowvale. She releases Dora and all living children to their bodies while keeping the souls of dead children to protect in faerie. The sacrifice means Dora will never be made whole, but both halves accept the cost.

Dora wakes at Mrs. Dun's orphanage, and Abigail wakes as well. Ricks is arrested, and Lady Carroway takes Dora in. When Elias returns from faerie with roses and a silver ring set with a single star, he declares his love. Dora asks if he truly wants her with only half a soul. He replies that he fell in love with her exactly as she is. Dora whispers yes, and they kiss.

In an epilogue, Vanessa marries Edward, and Dora and Elias marry in a small ceremony. Dora devotes herself to charitable work alongside Elias and Mrs. Dun. Miss Jennings marries Albert. England's workhouse laws grow harsher, but children whisper that a faerie lady with mismatched eyes sometimes steals away the cruelest masters. One day, Elias and Dora visit their loved ones in a final farewell and disappear from England, implied to have made their way to faerie at last.