Iris of the Willow

Iris Paisley doesn’t know that she committed a horrific crime of passion in a past life, for all souls lose their memory upon entering a new body. She believes she is merely unlucky when catastrophe follows her, from losing loved ones, to a war breaking out across the world. In actuality, the universe is carefully coordinating these hardships, to correct the steep karmic imbalance her prior incarnation caused.

Iris finds refuge from her avalanching life in her dreams, where she is visited by a charismatic stranger named Mada Retina. As Iris falls in love with him, she makes the startling discovery that he is not a figment of her imagination, but a real man that she can see in the flesh—if she is willing to make some sacrifices. Iris and Mada are actively fighting on opposite sides of the war that is raging. Choosing him will mean forsaking her friends and potentially costing them the victory they so desperately seek. It doesn’t occur to Iris that Mada’s love may be yet another ploy, a trap set by the orchestrators of fate, to make her pay for the crime she left to fester over centuries.