The Witch King Books in Order

The Witch King books are YA fantasy with fae politics, romance, and a long argument about who gets to hold power. The story begins with Wyatt Croft, a trans witch who fled the fae kingdom of Asalin after a night of magic went terribly wrong. He has built a life in the human world, but that life is cut short when Prince Emyr North comes for him and demands he return.

Home is a problem in this series.

That is part of what gives the duology its emotional pull. The human world offers Wyatt space to live more honestly and a chance at ordinary care. Asalin is the place that shaped him, hurt him, and still claims him. The push and pull between those worlds adds tension from the start, even before the court politics fully close in around him.

Asalin itself is not written as a shiny fairy court full of easy glamour. It is a kingdom where fae hold power and witches live under that power, even though witches are deeply tied to the land, the magic, and the future of the realm. That imbalance sits underneath every ceremony, threat, and bargain. The series keeps asking what change really looks like when the injustice is not just one cruel person, but a whole structure people have learned to live inside.

Wyatt is nobody's tidy hero.

That is one of the best things about these books. Wyatt is funny, defensive, impulsive, and often exhausted by what other people want from him. Emyr, the prince he left behind, is more than a lost love or a political obstacle. Their relationship has to carry affection, mistrust, history, and duty all at once, so the romance feels tangled in a believable way. Around them, the series builds a cast of allies and enemies who keep reminding Wyatt that personal happiness and public responsibility do not always point in the same direction.

The first book, The Witch King, leans hard into the return to court story. Wyatt has to survive the royal engagement he once escaped, reckon with the worsening treatment of witches, and decide whether saving himself is enough. The second book, The Fae Keeper, opens after major change has started but before anything is stable. Wyatt and Emyr are trying to rebuild Asalin, hunt down enemies who slipped away, and understand hidden truths about the witches' real place in fae society, all while Wyatt struggles to control his own magic.

So the tone is not cozy, but it is not bleak for the sake of bleakness either. These books mix yearning, danger, sharp banter, and real political stakes. If you like fantasy that combines queer romance, court intrigue, found family, and characters who have to fight for a future they can actually live with, this duology gives you exactly that. It cares about magic, but it cares even more about freedom, trust, and what it takes to build a better world after the first battle is over.