WHAT THE HOUSES FORGOT
Romantasy (Romance Fantasy)By Betty S Keating
Length3h 6m
About this audiobook
Once a year, at the one event both their houses are bound by treaty to attend, Isbeau Colwrath waits in a doorway for a storm grey coat to appear at the top of the stairs.
She has done this for thirteen years.
House Colwrath and House Aeriven have hated each other since the Sundering, a broken betrothal eighty years buried, the kind of old grudge every child in the valley is raised on before they are old enough to ask what actually happened. Isbeau was raised on it too. She believed every word of it, until she was eleven years old, lost in a hedge maze, and found the Aeriven heir crying under a hedge with no one else in the world who had thought to ask if he was all right.
She has met him there every year since. She has never told a soul.
What Isbeau does not know, what she has never let herself examine too closely, is that the strange warmth that rises in her chest every time she is near him is not simply affection. It is magic, old, patient, and utterly forbidden, the very thing that doomed the two lovers who came before them. And the closer she and Thane grow, the more the valley's oldest, most careful secret begins to stir: a locked case built for two hands and no others, a great aunt erased so completely from the family record that not even her own mother remembers her name, and a Warden whose family has spent eighty years enforcing a law built on a lie.
Now the valley's protective magic is failing. A village is already sick from a blight no one can explain. And the Warden has a solution, one that requires Isbeau and Thane to be bound together before they are ever allowed to fully choose each other, the same cruel, clean fix that cost two people everything, eighty years ago.
Isbeau and Thane have a choice their predecessors were never given: complete an old, unfinished magic, honestly, dangerously, entirely on their own terms, or lose each other the safe way, the sanctioned way, the way that has already broken one family beyond repair.
Some hedges keep growing long after everyone has forgotten why they were planted. Some houses forget the truth for eighty years and call it peace.
WHAT THE HOUSES FORGOT is a lush, slow burn romantasy about the families we inherit, the truths they bury to keep the peace, and the particular courage it takes to choose someone freely, in the open, when everyone who came before you was too frightened to try.
Audiobook details
GenreFantasy, Romance, General Fiction
Length3 hrs 6 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Foreword
2Acknowledgements
3CHAPTER ONE: The Doorway Thing
4CHAPTER TWO: What the Weather Wants
5CHAPTER THREE: The Day They Met
Show all chaptersShow less
6CHAPTER FOUR: The Locked Case
7CHAPTER FIVE: The Missing Sister
8CHAPTER SIX: Two Hands
9CHAPTER SEVEN: The Warden’s Interview
10CHAPTER EIGHT: What Lady Corrin Already Knew
11CHAPTER NINE: A Grandmother’s Diary
12CHAPTER TEN: What Neither of Them Stepped Back From
13CHAPTER ELEVEN: What His Father Would Not Deny
14CHAPTER TWELVE: What Her Mother Had Been Told Never to Speak
15CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Woman in the Hills
16CHAPTER FOURTEEN: What Yselde Remembers
17CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Northern Holding
18CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Eighty Years, Undone
19CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Letter Home
20CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The News From Thornfield
21CHAPTER NINETEEN: What the Council Decided
22CHAPTER TWENTY: Beneath the Hedge
23CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: What the Hedge Remembered
24CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: What Grew Back
25CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Hedge in Daylight
26EPILOGUE: What the Hedge Remembers
More from Betty S Keating
THE RETURN OF THE KINGJ.R.R. Tolkien21h 5m4.7 (1.2M)$7 · $0.00
LegendSever Bronny26h 17m4.7 (2.8K)$30
Flint, Book 2Treasure Hernandez4h 13m4.6 (1.3K)$20
The Newly Witch GameRobyn Peterman4h 39m4.7 (549)$15
MaelstromBethany Adams17h 6m4.6 (1.3K)$25
WildfireIlona Andrews12h 45m4.5 (62.9K)$33 · $0.00
Rumo & His Miraculous AdventuresWalter Moers24h 6m4.5 (17.2K)$35
Demon CopperheadBarbara Kingsolver21h 3m4.5 (949.4K)$46 · $0.00
Lolth's WarriorR. A. Salvatore13h 20m4.6 (2.4K)$33 · $0.00
Hell to PayMichael Anderle7h 50m4.6 (362)$20
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du BoisHonoree Fanonne Jeffers29h 49m4.5 (58K)$8 · $0.00
The Assassins of ThasalonLois McMaster Bujold9h 59m4.5 (7.6K)$20
Lola in the MirrorTrent Dalton13h 40m4.5 (43.9K)$33 · $0.00
Going PostalTerry Pratchett13h 36m4.5 (163.8K)$33 · $0.00
The Leo Tolstoy CollectionLeo Tolstoy9h 1m4.5 (4.9K)$12 · $0.00
Sword and ShadowMichelle Sagara16h 51m4.5 (2.2K)$40 · $0.00
The Skull of the WorldKate Forsyth10h 28m4.5 (3.8K)$20
The Story of a New NameElena Ferrante19h 3m4.5 (279.7K)$25
Scars of RebellionAnthony J. Melchiorri12h 56m4.6 (347)$25
A Tree Grows in BrooklynBetty Smith14h 55m4.4 (577.6K)$33 · $0.00
The Chandler Brothers, the Entire CollectionCarly Phillips26h 33m4.7 (3.6K)$30
Breath of HeavenDeborah Raney9h 11m4.7 (759)$23
Desperate MeasuresBrenda Jackson8h 59m4.7 (669)$28 · $0.00
Pride & Prejudice (Annotated)Jane Austen15h 10m4.7 (13.3K)$2 · $0.00
Searching For ThanksgivingS.E. Smith4h 24m4.8 (395)$20
The InheritanceBlair Howard6h 40m4.8 (283)$23
The Dance with Me TrilogyShelley Shepard Gray21h 44m4.7 (1.2K)$35
The Search (Annotated)Grace Livingston Hill7h 29m4.7 (1.1K)$0.99 · $0.00
The Captivating WarriorCami Checketts, Daniel Banner4h 8m4.7 (608)$15
TimberTate James15h 36m4.6 (28.8K)$23
The ReunionJana Deleon6h 31m4.6 (1.6K)$26 · $0.00
Long LostLexi Blake13h 12m4.6 (3.2K)$23
The Vineyard BrideKatie Winters5h 5m4.6 (1.9K)$15
Something Like LoveBeverly Jenkins10h 21m4.6 (2.7K)$29 · $0.00
Wishes from the HeartSophie Mays4h 9m4.7 (343)$15 · $0.00
Blizzard ShowdownShirlee McCoy5h 16m4.6 (1.1K)$12 · $0.00
The Heart of CourageLynne Basham Tagawa10h 57m4.7 (240)$20
Love Inspired Suspense October 2025 - Box Set 2 of 2Laura Scott, Carrie Stuart Parks, Jennifer Pierce17h 34m4.8 (88)$35 · $0.00
To Hold and ProtectSandra Owens7h 59m4.6 (1.1K)$8 · $0.00
The Newly Witch GameRobyn Peterman4h 39m4.7 (549)$15
Ethic IIAshley Antoinette9h 1m4.7 (8K)$20
RiversnowTess Thompson8h 11m4.7 (1.3K)$20
Supreme ClienteleAshley & JaQuavis8h 58m4.7 (3.4K)$20
Body Refinement in a Beast Tamer’s World, Book 1Seth Ring14h 7m4.7 (1.3K)$27
Desperate MeasuresBrenda Jackson8h 59m4.7 (669)$28 · $0.00
Searching For ThanksgivingS.E. Smith4h 24m4.8 (395)$20
Naughty 4Brenda Hampton7h 30m4.7 (726)$17
The Dance with Me TrilogyShelley Shepard Gray21h 44m4.7 (1.2K)$35
The DopemanJaQuavis Coleman5h 25m4.7 (3.8K)$20
BAEJahquel J.5h 22m4.7 (3.1K)$20
Dark RisingJeffrey Wilson, Brian Andrews13h 47m4.7 (1.3K)$27
WhistlerAnn Patchett10h 45m4.6 (4.6K)$29 · $0.00
Grand Opening 2Carl Weber9h 16m4.7 (2.4K)$20
Sons of Valor II: Violence of ActionBrian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson12h 34m4.6 (3.6K)$23
Malevolent MagicMildred Abbott7h 13m4.7 (1.2K)$17
Bikes, Toys, and Hot BoyzGenesis Woods, Shantaé13h 9m4.7 (722)$23
This Side of Paradise - The Original 1920 Edition (Annotated)F. Scott Fitzgerald11h 30m4.6 (1.6K)$2 · $0.00
War LordBernard Cornwell13h 21m4.6 (33.1K)$33 · $0.00
Ghetto BastardK’wan7h 37m4.6 (2.9K)$20
The Great Gatsby: Original 1925 Edition (An F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic NovelFrancis Scott Fitzgerald4h 45m4.6 (9.3K)$18 · $0.00
You may also like
An Oxford EnemyMaxine Barry10h 40m4.1 (694)$20
Listen to Your HeartLeenie Brown4h 51m4.0 (287)$4.99 · $0.00
De-WitchedSophie H. Morgan12h 30m3.9 (2.2K)$33 · $0.00
RevelleLyssa Mia Smith13h 31m4.0 (4.1K)$33 · $0.00
A Wish for HomeJo Ann Brown9h 5m4.4 (393)$29 · $0.00
The Poison SeasonMara Rutherford10h 42m3.9 (6.2K)$29 · $0.00
The Poison SeasonMara Rutherford10h 42m3.7 (6.1K)$29 · $0.00
Just BreatheLeeanna Morgan6h 55m4.3 (2.1K)$4.99
Dark Side of the RiverB.J. Daniels8h 31m4.4 (1.2K)$26 · $0.00
SolaceBethany Adams16h 26m4.6 (984)$25
DaybreakShelley Shepard Gray7h 49m4.2 (1K)$26 · $0.00
The Rancher's WagerMaisey Yates5h 16m4.0 (733)$24 · $0.00
Second Time's the CharmBrenda Jackson5h 13m4.4 (1.4K)$24 · $0.00
Bulls IslandDorothea Benton Frank11h 27m4.0 (10.6K)$29 · $0.00
The RebelJoanne Rock4h 54m4.0 (289)$12 · $0.00
The Tempting of Thomas CarrickStephanie Laurens14h 20m4.0 (4K)$23
How to Tame a Wild FiremanJennifer Bernard11h 12m4.1 (1.2K)$29 · $0.00
Bitter RivalsJ. Sterling4h 26m3.9 (1.5K)$15
The Silver Linings PlaybookMatthew Quick7h 18m4.1 (189.7K)$17 · $0.00
The Chase Is OnBrenda Jackson4h 41m4.4 (1.3K)$12 · $0.00