J.P. Barrow — Dark Fantasy

The Costs
of Magic

The Two Faces — A complete standalone — Coming November 2026

Every magic has a cost.
The most dangerous witches are the ones who decided
the cost was someone else's to bear.

When Gwen was ten years old, she watched through a pinhole as something murdered her mother and took her head. Fourteen years later, the killings have started again.

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“Every ingredient that can heal can also harm. What closes a wound can open one. What salves a burn can start a fire.”

From The Costs of Magic

The worlds

Three types of witches.
Three ways of paying.

Every magic asks something in return. The cost scales with the work. The trouble comes from those who forget to pay attention — or from those who know the cost exactly, and choose someone else to pay.

Brewers
Give back to the earth
Patient, rooted, slow. They infuse magic into materials over time — potions, salves, tinctures. The work costs almost nothing. The potion does what they cannot do in a hurry.
Casters
Take from whatever is closest
Structured spells, deliberate destruction, careful sacrifice. They can rip energy from objects, from living things. The most dangerous witches are the ones who looked at the cost and decided: not me.
Innates
Spend from their own souls
Magic that flows through them like water fills a vessel. Each Innate carries a unique gift. The power moves. The price is paid in vitality — in heartbeats, in years, in the self.
✦ ✦ ✦
THE
COSTS
OF
MAGIC
✦

November 2026

The Two Faces — standalone

The book

The Costs of Magic

Armed with a dead woman’s dress, a talking cat, and the ability to feel every lie like a needle under her skin, Gwen infiltrates the royal court that cast her out. What she finds there is worse than a monster.

It’s a family.

A dark fantasy about inherited power and the people who weaponize it. About parents and children and the terrible things love justifies. About the particular courage it takes to let yourself be known — fully, honestly, without the disguise — when everything you’ve survived has taught you that hiding is safer.

Dark fantasy Fantasy witches Magic system Female protagonist Found family Morally complex Slow burn romance Complete standalone Part of a larger world

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