When Secrets Bloom: It’s Publication Day #NewRelease

Come and celebrate with me the publication day of When Secrets Bloom, my latest historical fiction novel set in medieval Transylvania.

I have a special offer for you: the e-book is only 99c / 99p over all Amazon platforms until 31st August AND you can read it even if you don’t have an e-reader or a kindle: link to Amazon free app under the buy now button below or read in your browser.

Step Inside History
This weathered shopfront in Brașov is more than just wood, glass, and timeworn stone. It echoes with the quiet hum of forgotten trades and the murmur of secrets once whispered behind closed doors.

When I first stood before it, I didn’t just see a doorway—I saw an idea: the seed of a printing shop hidden deep in the heart of my novel. A place where forbidden knowledge was set in ink, and where stories—like healing herbs—were passed hand to hand, soul to soul.

This image became the threshold of When Secrets Bloom.

Open the door. The first pages from When Secrets Bloom await:

When Secrets Bloom

Chapter 1

Kronstadt, Transylvania,
3 December 1463, Thursday

That morning, after I fought for the life of a babe deemed lost by the Kronstadt physician, I knew not that by nightfall I’d be fighting for mine. Hope bloomed wildly in my chest. A chance at happiness, long elusive, drifted close and I dared to believe I might taste it too. I dared to ignore the soldier from my dreams, his unblessed mouth full of warning.

The night before, the door knock found me working in the barn. My barn. Sagging, half-swallowed by thistle and snow, but mine. Inside, a familiar scent of thyme and lavender clung to the air. The rhythmic hum of mortar against stone, the soft hiss of boiling suet, the slow drip-drip of tinctures into glass — all muffled the north wind’s cry. In this space, I remembered who I was. What I could do.

So when the sick came knocking I was ready. I would never turn them away. No matter the cost.

The feverfew I crushed between my fingers, dried and dull but still sharp with promise, had been once a vibrant green, like spring itself. Change was necessary. Even when it hurt. Without it, the feverfew held no power. Without it, neither did I.

I worked steadily, mixing the feathered leaves with dried marigold — the secret that coaxed strength from their bitterness turning it magical, for some, when it dispelled a headache or a joint ache.

My hands knew the rhythm; they had done this a thousand times. Once, by torchlight. Once, with blood under my nails. I had learned to heal not from books, but from necessity. From wounds torn open by steel. Staunching blood on rocky ground still slick with it. Stitching skin while a soldier’s breath already rattled in his throat; men too broken for prayers, who had no time for superstition, only for results. At Lord Vlad’s side, where death stalked like a wolf, I had become a healer not of faith, but of flesh. There, knowledge meant survival, not whispers of witchcraft.

And I had learned more than herbs. How to hold a blade to clean a wound and defend myself. How to aim a dagger when cornered. Skills no girl was meant to know—but Vlad never said so. To him, life was to be defended, with whatever tools one had. I had been one of his tools. A sharp one.

But here, in Kronstadt, my hands were a suspect. My skill, a threat.

And when the Magistrate sneered, his warty finger almost touching my nose, the growth bobbing in front of my eyes, I only smiled — soft as a prayer, sharp as a blade. Devil’s milk did work wonders and far better than the advice he’d been given, to rub with raw meat. But, of course, I didn’t say ‘devil’s milk.’ I cloaked my defiance in piety; I let the words slip from my tongue like prayer beads. ‘St. John’s Wort,’ I smiled.

He had dismissed me. While the Physician, puffed with his parchments and privileges, feared me for he knew I was better. He had titles. I had results. He had theory. I had blood-stained proof. Yet what are papers without perception? Titles, without trained hands? Even truth becomes blind when it refuses to look.

So I gathered herbs in secret. Forced my fingers to work past the knot settling between my shoulders. I healed in silence. Worked in the shadows cast by men who would rather see me forgotten.

Yet for all my knowledge, all I had done — for the men who kept all their limbs because I had not hesitated, for the mothers who still rocked babes I had brought into the world — I was still only a woman.

And that was my crime.

The barn door creaked, trembling in the wind. I brushed crushed petals from my fingers, pushing the past away before it could take hold.

Just as the knock came.

My heart held no fear as I reached for the crippled door. I was certain of who waited beyond. I’d sensed a good heart.

But behind the man, the wind had fallen still. And, absorbed by his presence, I thought nothing of it.

I opened the door to find Johann, the tanner, slumped before me. Pale as moonlight, his large chest heaving. Something was terribly wrong. His fingers locked onto my wrist with desperate force. His lips moved but no words came. I knew he hated how his tongue tangled when pressed by fear. My innards twisted.

‘Maria?’ My words were clipped, my mind racing. His wife was due any day now.

He nodded wildly, his breath a strangled thing in his throat. Then, with a frantic jerk, he slashed his arm at the elbow — over and over. My stomach lurched.

‘The midwife’s bleeding her?’ I spat the words like a curse.

Johann’s eyes were wet with terror.

Maria had nearly died the last time she brought a babe into the world, drained of blood by their treatment.  I had fought then, thrown the midwife out, repaired what they had broken. But the Physician had not forgotten, nor forgiven. He hadn’t spoken to me since, except to warn me never again to interfere with the mongrels. And now, they meant to finish what they had started.

Johann was a Saxon from the tanner’s guild who had fallen for Maria, a Vlach who lived on Șchei Hill, outside the city walls — a misalliance whispered about in taverns and scorned in the guild halls where bloodlines and trade mattered more than love. I’d promised Maria and Johann to be there when it was time for their next babe to be born.

My leather satchel was in Johann’s hands before I’d even thought to reach for it, a smoked ham in my arms — offering, bribe, distraction, I didn’t know. Its scent, thick and savoury, spilled in the air like the last vestiges of warmth in winter. My empty stomach protested. Johann’s nostrils flared and he swallowed hard. We had to run. Now.

Yet I hesitated in the doorway, my fingers grazing the rough wood of the barn. The warped planks were damp from the night air. Once, this had been my father’s domain — not for grain or tools, but for bales of wool and stretched linens, for skeins of dyed thread strung in neat rows. A weaver’s hands were meant for creating, for binding fibres into something strong, something lasting.

Now, it was mine, though barely. A place of hiding, of quiet defiance, of dwindling choices. My fingers curled against the wood, pressing into its splintered grooves. If I lost this, I lost everything.

The barn groaned in the wind, its frame settling like an old man shifting in his seat. How much longer before it collapsed under its own weight? How much longer before I did?

A gust of wind rattled the shutters. Above us, faint but deliberate, came the sound of scratching. Too slow for rat claws, too steady for wind. I knew my barn, as fickle as an old man’s temper. But Johann crossed himself. Said nothing. But I saw the shape of the thought pass over his face. He feared the strigoii, the unrested dead, scratching for a way back into the world of the living. They brought illness. Misfortune. Madness.

I pulled my cloak tighter, straightening my back. No hesitation. The streets would not stay empty for long.

We stepped outside keeping to the shadows, every footstep measured. A door creaked in the distance. A breath. A pause. Then silence.

Johann turned, ‘What is it?’

‘I forgot something.’

He hissed, barely above a whisper, ‘To turn back once your feet are set on the road is bad luck.’

‘But worse luck still is leaving behind what’s mine,’ I said, already pivoting.

I crossed the threshold one last time. The wind seemed to follow me in. I moved quickly, purposefully, to the back wall. Beneath a folded cloth, in the hollow of an old grain bin, it lay where I always kept it.

Copyright © Patricia Furstenberg. All Rights Reserved.

Read on. When Secrets Bloom is available from Amazon now for only 99c / 99p.