Pictish Queendom

Trust is a liability. Redemption is a fight.

Rowan is a forensic accountant who prefers numbers to people. Order, logic, and emotional distance have always kept him safe—until trust proves to be his most expensive miscalculation.

Jessica commits a violent crime shortly after graduating from high school. Condemned for a single moment, she learns how quickly the world stops caring about explanations, context, or the possibility of redemption.

Brought together by experimental nanotechnology, Rowan and Jessica form an unlikely alliance. What begins as a matter of survival becomes a process of transformation, forcing both of them to confront who they are when stripped of labels, expectations, and fear.

The Price of Staying is a story about finding your own path when none is offered, about listening to the quiet inner voice when the world demands obedience. It is a story of second chances—and of the truth that mistakes do not have to define a life.

Set in the grey space between good and evil, legality and morality, this novel explores how far people are willing to cross boundaries to become themselves—and what it truly costs to stay.