Crown Prince Azriel Faundor has learned to live by cruelty. Groomed to inherit both a throne and his father’s ruthlessness, he hides his fractured humanity behind steel and ceremony—until he discovers Nadia, a forgotten elf queen hidden beneath his castle. Her sorrow stirs compassion in him, but soon that fragile pity curdles into something darker.
 

What begins as mercy festers into obsession, and his version of love becomes her prison.
 

Trapped by prophecy and his delusion, Nadia learns that the only thing keeping her alive aside from her blessed blood is fear. She dreams of escape, of silence, of death, of freedom—but fate has other designs, and her unwilling union will give rise to the curse that damns them both.
 

Bound by sin, betrayal, and a love twisted into horror, this is how a king was broken, a curse was seeded, and a queen bore its beginning.
 

The addictive prequel to The Sinuous Bargain of a Cowardly Prince!