The first victims were never human. So the last thing she expected to lose was her heart. Princess Arienne Aravelle has spent her life performing the version of herself Sylvaris needs: composed, capable, untouchable. She is very good at it. She has had to be. But the city is changing. The creatures Sylvaris was built alongside are retreating into silence. Cryptic letters are finding their way into Arienne's hands. Something is moving beneath the surface of everything she has spent years protecting, and every warning points to a danger no one wants to name. She does not have time for the new frontier sentinel reassigned to her guard. Ikor Vardon is from the Outer Ring, unbothered by palace protocol, and constitutionally incapable of pretending not to notice things. He notices everything. Especially her. The problem is not that he is a distraction. The problem is that he is the only person in the palace who looks at her and seems to see something she forgot was there. Arienne has spent a long time being careful. Ikor is making it very difficult to remember why.