If Bonded by Thorns was the fairy tale, Forged by Malice is the legend that rises from it.
Elizabeth Helen’s The Beasts of the Briar series has always been a love story wrapped in magic, but by the time we reach Book Three, the story has outgrown its Beauty and the Beast roots and evolved into something entirely its own—a saga about love, healing, and what it means to be truly seen.

At the heart of Forged by Malice stands Ezryn, the High Prince of Spring. The knight in shining armor. The man behind the helm. The one who has turned silence into survival.

The Prince Who Never Removes His Helm

Ezryn has always been the mystery among Rosalina’s cursed princes.
From the very beginning, Helen hinted at the strange, sacred customs of the Spring Court—how its royals don their helms after childhood and never remove them before others. Only a fated mate may see their face. To do so otherwise would be a deep dishonor.

That tradition takes on new weight in Forged by Malice. Ezryn is not simply armored; he is entombed. He never eats in front of others, never removes his helm even around his brothers, and never allows himself the vulnerability of being witnessed. The armor isn’t only metal—it’s identity, duty, and the illusion of control.

Helen takes what could have been a simple character quirk and turns it into an extended metaphor for isolation. Ezryn’s physical concealment mirrors his emotional restraint, and his eventual journey—without spoiling its details—becomes one of learning to let himself be known.

It’s not that he doesn’t feel; it’s that he feels too much, and the armor keeps him safe from that intensity. His love, when it finally surfaces, feels like sunlight filtered through steel—bright, blinding, and hard-won.

A Story of Renewal—and What Happens When Renewal Fails

One of the joys of The Beasts of the Briar is how each realm reflects its prince’s personality and emotional state. The Winter Court glimmered with icy stoicism, the Autumn Court shimmered with melancholy firelight, and now, in Forged by Malice, we step into the world of Spring—lush, radiant, and trembling on the edge of decay.

But this isn’t the pastel paradise one might expect. Helen turns the familiar symbol of “spring” on its head. Here, rebirth doesn’t come easily. Growth has rotted at the root. The sunlight feels brittle. The vines that should cradle instead constrict.

That sense of corrupted renewal becomes the book’s emotional language. Everything Ezryn touches—his realm, his relationships, his very self—is stuck between bloom and ruin. His arc asks: what happens when the season of life forgets how to live?

Helen doesn’t answer with easy metaphors. Instead, she lets the natural world echo Ezryn’s turmoil, and in doing so, deepens the atmosphere that’s always been this series’ secret strength. Each book feels like stepping into a painting: color, texture, and emotion woven together in ways that feel tactile and alive.

Love as Revelation

Readers who’ve followed Rosalina’s journey from Bonded by Thorns through Woven by Gold will recognize how Forged by Malice raises both the emotional and romantic stakes. This is, by far, the spiciest installment in the series—but what’s remarkable is that the heat never overshadows the heart.

Elizabeth Helen has mastered the art of writing intimacy that means something. Every kiss, every moment of vulnerability, every lingering glance serves a narrative purpose. The series’ slow-burn, polyamorous dynamic continues to evolve—now rooted less in fantasy wish fulfillment and more in emotional honesty.

In Ezryn’s case, love is not about possession or passion. It’s about permission. Permission to remove the helm. To eat a meal beside another person. To exist, unguarded.
That kind of romance is more radical than any spell or curse break. It’s a reminder that the truest kind of love isn’t about saving someone from their darkness—it’s standing beside them while they learn to see the light again.

For readers who crave spice with soul, Forged by Malice delivers both in abundance.

A Series That Keeps Expanding Its Heart

One of Helen’s greatest strengths is how each installment adds new depth to the series’ emotional and mythological world without losing its intimate core. Bonded by Thorns introduced us to the curse, the princes, and the fragile alliances of Castletree. Woven by Gold grounded the story in quieter grief and intellectual longing. And Forged by Malice stretches those roots outward—expanding not just the lore of the realms, but the bonds between the characters.

As we venture deeper into The Beast of the Briar lore, there are so many scenes and characters that I want to talk about in detail, but I’m not here for spoilers. It’s safe to say that, like Woven by Gold, Ezryn’s story and realm bring with them some new faces and old wounds, but these feel different, and the stakes of Forged by Malice grow beyond the walls of the castle. But the beauty of Elizabeth Helen’s storytelling is that even as the scope of the series widens, the focus remains on the people.

We don’t read these books just for the battles or the curses; we read them because we care about Rosalina and her princes—about how they love, how they heal, and how they grow through (and sometimes despite) one another.

There’s also a subtle shift in Forged by Malice that longtime romantasy readers will appreciate: the series begins to forge its mythos entirely, stepping beyond its Beauty and the Beast inspiration into something larger and more self-defined. Helen’s writing feels like it’s come fully into bloom here—confident, lyrical, and fiercely character-driven.

The Writing: Elegance in Every Layer

It’s few and far between that I read a continuous series, mostly because I get to them so late that multiple books are published and I devour them in a week and then have to wait a year or more for the next one. But in those rare times I do get into a series, my favorite part as a reader and an editor is watching how the author’s voice evolves from book to book. Elizabeth Helen’s growth between Bonded by Thorns and Forged by Malice is undeniable. The prose retains its vivid imagery and rhythmic flow, a true testament to a love for fairy tales, but with more action happening in more places than in previous installments, pacing and tone are more important than ever, and Elizabeth Helen delivers with scenes that shift fluidly from levity to tension and romance to heartbreak.

The language of the series remains lush and romantic, but there’s restraint where it counts, sentences that breathe, and moments that linger. A razor’s edge that balances the characters and the readers from one chapter to the next, Elizabeth Helen knows when to dazzle us with description and when to let silence do the storytelling.

And then there’s the structure. The use of alternating POVs, which was set up in book one, continues to give readers access to multiple emotional landscapes that feel uniquely personal, which is particularly important when multiple love interests and main characters are involved. This may be Ezryn’s book, but the stories of Caspian, Keldarion, and Dayton aren’t neglected by any means, ensuring that every character feels distinct, evolving, and necessary to the whole.

This alternating POV structure doesn’t only support the character development but also the plot movement. No one scene is ever repeated point for point simply for the sake of character perspective, meaning readers never feel stagnant reading the same fight scene from three or four characters.

The Heart Beneath the Steel

Elizabeth Helen crafts emotion well, but very little of it has come from the prince, who literally lives under a shell of steel. Forged by Malice works to break through that hard exterior, but this isn’t just Ezryn’s book; it’s the book where the series itself seems to take a collective breath. Where love stops being an abstract curse-breaking force and becomes something raw and personal.

Ezryn’s arc, like each of the princes, is anchored in his connection to Rosalina, but it’s through that connection we begin to see the exhaustion of shouldering a burden alone, the terror of being seen, and the quiet hope that someone might love you when the mask falls.
Elizabeth Helen takes time leading us through that journey. Literally this book is longer than the first two, but it unfolds with patience and a tenderness that understands that growth, like life, isn’t linear; that healing is rarely soft, respects the complexity of accepting that vulnerability isn’t weakness but a different kind of strength, and that love is as much an act of rebellion as devotion.

That truth is far more important than the others revealed in these pages, although certainly less dramatic.

Final Thoughts: A Story Reforged

It’s clear by the end of Forged by Malice that The Beasts of the Briar series is no longer a simple fairy-tale retelling but has transformed into a living, breathing world with its own rules and rhythms. Everything readers loved about the first two—romance, worldbuilding, and tension—has been deepened with maturity, sensuality, emotional grace, and a conclusion that won’t be as predictable as we had initially thought.