Three years ago, Lexi nursed a wounded soldier back to health in her family's crumbling estate—memorizing the shape of his hands, the low timbre of his voice, the careful distance he kept even as fever made him reach for her. He called her his friend's little sister. She called him the man who ruined her for anyone else. Now her brother lies buried, her home belongs to creditors, and that same soldier stands at her door. Older. Battle-scarred. Bearing a royal crest and a truth that changes everything: Lincoln, Crown Prince of the realm, bound by a deathbed promise to protect her.
He installs her as his advisor—unprecedented, scandalous, impossibly close. Court whispers brand her a whore; noble beauties parade before him in silks and ambition. Lexi watches Lincoln dance with potential brides and remembers how his fingers once brushed her wrist when she changed his bandages, how his gaze dropped to her mouth before he looked away. She is not meant for thrones. He is not meant to want her with such devastating intensity. Yet in shadowed corridors and stolen glances, duty crumbles against the weight of three years' worth of hunger—and the dangerous question neither dares speak aloud.