Forbidden Love and Oaths in The Livingstone Saga: Iseo and Celestino’s Story

Imagine a love forbidden by design, yet needed as desperately as air. Could you resist it? Would you endure the consequences when it slips through your fingers? Passions like these burn hot and fast, consuming everything in their path before fading into memory and ash.

We do not truly choose who we love. Love strikes without warning. Sometimes it is a spark of recognition, sometimes a force that sweeps us away before we understand what has happened. It lifts us from the life we once knew and sends us soaring, reckless and radiant, like wings caught in firelight. Forbidden love, the kind that tempts us to betray oath and duty for a single moment of closeness, is the sort of love legends are built upon. Bright. Fierce. Unforgiving.

But no one can remain in flight forever. Eventually, we fall back to earth and must face what remains. Pieces of the life we once held together lie scattered, and nothing fits quite the same again.
This kind of love leaves its mark. It alters the course of a life and stains memory with longing. There is no returning to what once was, only moving forward with the taste of ash and the shadow of what might have been.

Iseo and Celestino burn bright in BIRTH, Book One of The Livingstone Saga. Will Celestino honor the sacred oath written in the Codex of Gargoyles, or will he betray everything to follow the call of his own heart?

​ 2014, revised 2026 Janell Rhiannon. All rights reserved.