After spending years training to defend my people from our enemies, I never expected that my enemy would be the one keeping me alive. Athos is the last human city. A treaty with the Fae keeps the fae, the vampires, and the wolf shifters at bay, while we fight against the dragons at our border. Being a human in this world is dangerous, and we all make sacrifices to survive.

Nineteen years ago, I was plucked from the heart of a bloody massacre that spared nobody else. Small. Fragile. An enigma. Now ward to a powerful High Master who knows too much and says too little, I lead a simple life, never straying from the confines of an imaginary line I've drawn around the castle grounds.

Until an oracle predicted my regal future, I'd never imagined myself rising above the curve of my round ears. After all, I was the magicless halfling loved by beasts but loathed by every pure-blooded faerie at court. Well...by all but one.

Agenor, Lord Protector of the Fae Isles and right hand of the Mother herself, doesn’t expect anything to still surprise him after twelve centuries of life. Finding a taunting note from an anonymous thief in his wardrobe is enough to rouse his curiosity, though. Enough to do the unthinkable—write back. Then he finds out he’s been exchanging letters with a humble human. Worse, a human challenging him to his face.

I’d known exactly who he was—the Unseelie prince. But I hadn’t known just what he was. I’d been fooled. The creature I’d formed a tentative friendship with in my family’s dungeon was not the gentle, intriguing prince I’d thought him to be. He was a monster. A bloodthirsty beast. And I’d helped him escape my uncle’s clutches. Such a betrayal called for severe consequences, and the price of releasing the biggest threat our kingdom had faced in hundreds of years was not one I would survive.