Anastasia had always lived the right way. Work, plans, neatly pressed skirts, a relationship “as it should be,” and the stubborn belief that if you were a good girl, life would eventually reward you for it. Life did not. But another world did. After her boyfriend’s betrayal, Asya breaks from her carefully drawn path for the first time — and finds herself in Arlen, a border world where a girl like her can be given to the World Forest as tribute. To be married. To a monster. Except the monster is nothing like the frightening tales promised. Noah is the Water Lord, Master of Waters — not human, with gray eyes, scales along his cheekbones, and a heart far too kind for someone everyone has learned to fear. He does not demand obedience. He does not lock her in a golden cage. He does not promise love at first sight. He simply offers her his hand. And for the first time in far too long, Asya realizes that with someone beside you, you do not have to merely survive. You can live. But the World of Ordered Chaos bears its name for a reason. Here, fairy tales turn out to be ancient warnings, water remembers vows, sand knows how to lie, and forgotten beings are beginning to step out of the shadows again. And while Asya learns to become the Mistress of Waters, to accept her true self, and to love without fear, someone is already placing the pieces for a new war. Sometimes a new life does not begin with a clean slate. Sometimes it begins with a wedding to a monster.