The Dark Series didn’t begin with Haya and Andreas—at least, not at first.

I tried starting with two other couples, circling their stories, but each attempt left me feeling like I was standing in the wrong doorway. Eventually I realized what Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride was true: I had to go back to the beginning.

The Naess family.

Andreas Barros was the last of the brothers to finally let me into his perspective, but he’d always been there at the edges. I would toy with him, sketching out fragments, only to push him aside in favor of louder voices (cough you-know-who-they-are cough).

Still, there was no escaping him. Because Andreas was the first. The first to take the risk and break away. The first to stand against Viktor

and question everything he'd been raised to believe.

The one whose defiance cleared a path for other stories to come forward. But beginnings don't belong to him alone.

I learned quickly never to underestimate Haya Yaisien.

At first, I thought Haya might be doomed to be an eternal sad girl. It’s a great aesthetic but no way to live—in real life or in fiction.

But bravery doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s quieter than a whisper. Sometimes it stumbles forward, carrying its wounds in plain sight, refusing to give in by just not letting go of the last rung on the ladder.

That tender persistence, so often mislabeled as weakness, is strength.

Maybe the most important kind.

Her perspective was often difficult to write, and her happily-ever-after, ironically, even more so.

Maybe it was because I knew it meant leaving the heart of her journey behind, or maybe it was because of just how deeply she’d earned it.

Bringing Haya’s love story to its close was the first time writing ever gave me a happy heartbreak.

While this duet closes with a bang, this is not the end of The Dark.

It lives on with many more stories to tell.

I want to thank the first ARC readers who gave this duet a chance. Betting your time and energy on a debut novel with a cliffhanger, from an indie author no less, was a real risk, and I'm grateful you took it.

Thank you to the Limerence writers' Discord group for being endlessly inspiring and funny as hell.

And a sincere thank you to Marilyn Aracely, who brought the interior of both books to life. They look beautiful because of her.

The end of 2026 will bring a new duet—a new couple, very different from where we've been before. But familiar faces from the Once More Duet are all over it, including the re-emergence of an unanswered question from Haya's story.

I hope you will consider taking a chance on me again.

- Rose