Cards of Love Books in Order

Cards of Love is a multi-author collection built around tarot-inspired novellas, and Sierra Simone’s contribution, The Moon, slots directly into her New Camelot universe. This page zooms in on that story and helps you place it alongside the larger trilogy if you are reading everything in order.

The Moon follows Merlin and Nimue, two side characters from New Camelot whose relationship has always carried an air of tragedy and inevitability. The novella opens after a major event in American King and plays with the idea that Merlin and Nimue have lived and loved across more than one lifetime. What they are trying to untangle is not just one shared past, but two, with double the betrayal and grief.

Because the story is shorter than a full-length novel, Simone keeps the focus tight: a magical, melancholy reunion between two people who have hurt each other deeply and are still incapable of letting go. There is sex, of course, but also a lot of quiet anger, yearning, and talk of fate. The tarot frame - The Moon card as a symbol of illusion, intuition, and the pull of the unconscious - fits neatly over Merlin’s role as a seer and advisor who is never quite allowed to choose his own heart first.

You can technically read The Moon as a standalone paranormal-flavored romance, but the emotional payoff is much richer if you have lived through American Queen, American Prince, and American King first. This page will flag that connection clearly, so you do not accidentally spoil yourself on big trilogy twists by jumping ahead.

If you enjoy the mix of reincarnation, magic, and intense eroticism here, it is an easy hop to Simone’s other more overtly fantastical work, like Thornchapel or her entry in the Peculiar Tastes universe, The Fae Queen’s Captive. Those books carry the same sense that love and obsession can reach across worlds and lifetimes, even when it probably should not.