The Envoy

"And yet the thought that occupied him was disarmingly simple.
He wanted her to stay.
The realization unsettled him. Want was dangerous. Want was personal. Want was the luxury of men who did not carry kingdoms on their backs.
He had known bodies. He had known proximity. But he had never known this-this aching attentiveness, this compulsion to catalogue every word a woman had ever spoken to him as though it were scripture."

When Andrea Vale, an envoy for Eryndor, is sent to negotiate a fragile alliance with the powerful kingdom of Calvarin, she expects political resistance - not a lonely king whose quiet devotion begins to dismantle the walls she has spent a lifetime building.

But when strategy gives way to yearning, their growing bond is shadowed by secrets Andrea never knew she carried - secrets that could unravel far more than a treaty.