Leyla

Novel in progress

In a fractured near-future London, Leyla is everything those in power fear. She even fears herself. Her parents call her unstable, society calls her unclassifiable. But Leyla suspects what she really is...a spark waiting to catch.

When she flees from the polished, suffocating world of her family into the shadows by the railway line, she discovers a group of rebels who, like her, don’t fit into anyone’s definition of belonging. Among them, Leyla finds then learns to wield her power that feels both ancestral, dangerous and forbidden.

When faced with circumstances beyond her control,  the pull of her darker self takes Leyla beyond the point of return. Her world begins to erupt in flames, and she must define what she is to become: a leader, destroyer, or something far more dangerous.

🔥 A visceral coming-of-age story about identity, power, and the intoxicating freedom of letting the world burn.

An Extract: Layla

Prologue

The memory was hazy, blurred at the edges like smoke winding into the sky, but Leyla remembers the smell the most. The sharp, unmistakable scent of something beginning to burn. She had learned this early: fire had a life of its own, breathing, eating, consuming. She felt something electric inside her chest, something beyond the thrill of risk, as she crouched by the edge of the golden field, fingers sticky with sweat, a match held carefully between her thumb and forefinger.

It was a sweltering summer which had prompted this unexpected family trip to “get away” and “relax.” There were only rolling fields, hedges, and stretches of dry grass, nothing like the shimmering, stinking heat of the city. Her parents had always warned her about the dangers of fire, had given her strict instructions never to play with matches, kept them away like sharp scissors or bottles of medication.

But the box had been so small, just resting there on the edge of the picnic blanket. She could barely hear the low murmur of her parents talking as they sat in the grass, beside the river in the distance. All she could think about was the snap of the match head against the side of the box, the sharp scratch and rasp of its voice, the spark that bloomed into a tiny, hungry flame.  The sweet little hit of a sulphurous snap.

She blew on it gently, to keep it alive without letting it out of control, to flame out and die.  The small flickers felt like secrets whispered just to her, dancing at her fingertips. She crouched lower, watching the flame catch on a single dry blade of grass.

The fire moved with a rhythm, a pulse, and she felt herself falling, drawn into it. She nurtured it, and it wasn’t long before the field was alive, flames licking up to the sky, their warmth wrapping around her in a cocoon. The world smelled of heat and char, and for the first time, she felt that now-familiar sense of peace, like she’d found a companion in the flames.

Her parents’ shouts broke the trance. They pulled her away, yelling about  danger, about recklessness,  about what she could possibly have been thinking. Smothering her. But even as they dragged her back to the safety of their world, she looked over her shoulder at the smoky haze hanging over the field, feeling as though she were leaving a piece of herself behind.

She learned many things in that moment: the thrill of control, the power in a single spark, and the mesmerizing beauty of the flames, and how to carry that scent of smoke inside her; smoldering, waiting.