Seren lost everything the night King Aldric's armies swept through her homeland. Three years later, she survives in his palace as a handmaiden, invisible, controlled, and quietly furious.Then the land itself fights back.An ancient curse called the Hollowing begins to rot the kingdom from the inside out, blackening crops, poisoning rivers, silencing newborn children. The only way to break it, the conqueror and a true-blooded daughter of the conquered must bind their fates together and complete three sacred rites across the dying land.Every noble daughter refuses. Every candidate fails.Then someone notices the quiet girl scrubbing the floors.Seren agrees, not for him, not for his kingdom, but for her people who are starving in it. She has conditions. He accepts every one. And when the binding ritual ties their wrists together with a thread of living gold, she tells herself it means nothing.But the rites demand truth. Sacrifice. Surrender.And the closer they get to saving the land, the harder it becomes to remember that he is the enemy, and that wanting to trust him might be the most dangerous thing she's ever done.