Zara has a system for bad days: three breaths, one good thing, forward momentum. It has never failed her — until the morning she finds evidence her partner spent the night with Lunaria's most powerful noblewoman, and the kingdom's dying king announces, before the entire court, that someone has been sabotaging his search for a fated mate for eleven years.As the palace archivist, Zara knows the royal bloodline records better than anyone alive. So when she finally finds what's been hidden in them — a name, erased four generations ago, at the bottom of a line of descendants ending with her own — she realizes she isn't just an archivist anymore.King Caelan has seven months before an ancient curse kills him. The ritual confirms what neither of them expected: Zara is his fated mate. But the same woman who spent decades trying to control the search isn't finished and she's not protecting a secret anymore. She's trying to end the monarchy for good, even if it means she has to eliminate the ruling king before his curse do.